


Perfect Light

by lane_hampson



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Chaos Theory, Character Death, Drama, Eventual Fluff, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Heavy Angst, Magic and Science, Not Really Character Death, Other, POV Jane Foster, Parallel Universes, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Post-Canon Fix-It, Romance, Thanos is a dumb purple twat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-17
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-08-03 14:09:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 34,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16327460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lane_hampson/pseuds/lane_hampson
Summary: Jane knows better than most that everything has a time limit. Even millions and millions of miles away, stars burn out.





	Perfect Light

**Author's Note:**

> A couple quick thank yous:
> 
> -to my dear chum Nikkers, for the beta and for the support.
> 
> -and to the Russos / the MCU, for pissing me off so damn hard I wrote 30,000+ words out of pure, unadulterated spite.

_You’re missing the point. There’s no throne._

_There’s no version of this where you come out on top._

 

 

Jane thinks of Thor when the news starts coming in about the spaceship over New York.

Later, she’ll wonder if that was part of it too. If she helped it happen, in some weird, cosmic way that all the degrees in the world couldn’t possibly extrapolate.

Reports about the destruction of the city block cycle one after the other; the edges of stone buildings crumbling like sandcastles, like echoes of Greenwich. Shaky, scattered cellphone footage of Tony Stark and the other warring, frenzied figures before they all disappeared. Jane barely breathes as she watches, her body coiled with tension. Waiting for the next thing, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

The other shoe drops in her kitchen.

The deafening crash makes her whole apartment shudder, and Jane stumbles a few steps forward, bracing herself for an assault. It doesn’t come. The air stills around her, and after a moment there’s nothing but the sound of her own shaken, heavy breathing, and the creak of the floorboards underneath her feet. Jane straightens up and makes her way slowly toward the kitchen.

He’s lying on his back in the middle of the linoleum floor, covered in dust, glass and broken crockery. Jane recognises him right away, and she opens the cutlery drawer and grabs the first thing she can reach.

“Hey,” she says, pointing a fork at him.

Loki doesn’t stir at all at her voice. She can see the shallow rise and fall of his chest, but he’s not conscious. There are dark bruises on his neck, and blood oozing from his eyes, mouth, and from a wound on his head. The sight of him alone uncurls a quiet panic inside of her.

Jane tugs her cell from her pocket with her free hand, and starts to dial Erik’s number, but hesitates. She can’t see Loki breathing anymore and wonders if maybe, in her shock, she’d just imagined it.

She steps forward a little, and then crouches down, her hand hovering just above his chest. Loki gasps suddenly, a loud, strangled noise, and his eyes fly open. Jane hurls herself backward, brandishing the fork again.

He’s mouthing something, and it’s so quiet it takes her a moment to realise what he’s saying.

_Thor._

He says it a couple more times, but his eyes aren’t focusing, on her or on anything else. He’s someplace else, Jane realises.

“Loki,” Jane says, as calmly as she can manage. “Thor isn’t here. It’s Jane Foster. You’re in my apartment. On earth.”

It takes a moment, but the haze starts to lift, and Loki starts to come back. He focuses, first on the room around him and then slowly, he turns his head and looks right at her, eyes narrowing slightly.

He says something, but it’s so quiet she can’t make out the words.

“What?”

He inclines his head in the direction of her fork.

“If you’re trying to feed me,” Loki says, his voice barely a whisper. “I believe the custom is that you put something on it.”

Jane eyes him warily, keeping the fork pointed at him. “What are you doing here?”

Loki smiles, the dangerous, confident way he had the first time she’d met him. It feels considerably less threatening this time, with him flat on his back, seemingly half an inch from death.

“I missed your warm and convivial disposition.”

Jane frowns.

“No, you didn’t.”

“That was--,”

“I know what you were doing,” Jane interrupts. “Why are you here? Where’s Tony Stark?”

Loki’s smile disappears.

“Why would I know where Stark is? Or _care_ , for that matter?”

“But that was you, wasn’t it? In the spaceship.”

Loki struggles onto his side and tries to sit up, but winces with every movement, and has to stop, bracing himself against the floor. When he speaks, his breathing is laboured.

“I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”

“It can’t be a coincidence,” Jane says. “Don’t lie to me.”

He shoots her a withering look.

“Foster, why would I bother?”

Jane’s face feels hot, and she realises she’s sweating a little. Why _would_ he bother? If he was trying to take over the world again, what would be the point of coming to her, of all people? She wouldn’t be a threat to him, in any capacity. Even injured, with his power he could kill her in an instant. She’s seen what he’s capable of, and all her bravado and all her cutlery couldn’t save her from it.

She holds onto the fork for a little longer, anyway.

“What happened to you?”

Loki absently touches his neck, where Jane can now see the bruises look like imprints of fingers that are too big to be human. He looks at her, eyes vacant and brow furrowed.

“I don’t know.”

“Where’s Thor? Is he okay?

“I don’t know,” Loki repeats, deliberately enunciating every word.

Jane shifts forward onto her knees, lost for what to say. Loki wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and smears bright red blood across his chin. It looks like war paint.

“If you’re going to attempt to dispatch me with that fork, it’s probably best if we get that humiliation out of the way now.”

Jane shakes her head.

“I’m not going to try to kill you. Unless I have to.”

“Eminently pragmatic of you.”

He speaks lightly, effortlessly. Like he’s not hurt at all. Like they’re old friends. Like the last time she saw him, he _hadn’t_ been just a dead body, unmoving, on a plain of dark, jagged rock.

“Thor thought you died on Svartalfheim, you know,” Jane tells him. There are shards of plaster and dust all over her jeans. “We both did.”

Loki regards her for a moment.

“As I understand it, many things were not as they appeared when we last met.”

It’s a sly, but effective jab where it hurts. Jane knows what he’s alluding to, but she’s not going to bite. Silence hangs heavily in the air between them. She can feel something broken digging into the side of her shin.

“Well, you look like shit,” Jane says, finally.

Loki’s hand drops away from his neck. “I’m sorry, are we trading insults now? Because I have been meaning to ask why you’re half the size of a regular Midgardian. Is it a structural issue, or are y--”

“ _I just meant_ , you don’t _look well_ ,” Jane shouts over him, too loudly. She lowers her voice. “Can you stand up? We should get you on the sofa, or something.”

“I can stand.”

“Okay, great,” Jane gets to her feet and puts the fork down on the bench with a quiet _thunk_. She turns back to him and without thinking, offers her hand.

Loki considers her for a moment, then ignores her offer and grabs the side of her fridge. Jane puts her hands in her pockets, as he pulls himself unsteadily to his feet. He slowly limps his way out of her kitchen, debris crunching under his boots. The adrenaline is starting to ease up now and Jane feels a little shaky and lightheaded.

“I’m actually normal sized you know,” Jane shouts after him. “There are a lot of people the same size as me.”

“If you say so,” Loki responds, from the other room.

Jane heads to her linen cupboard and pulls out one of her spare blankets. A tired, knitted old thing she’s had since she was a kid. She wonders if this is reckless. If the smart move would be to ask Loki to leave, and never come back. Jane clutches the wool quilt in her hands and thinks of Thor, of what he’d ask of her now, and pushes her doubts to the back of her mind.

She drops the blanket on the end of the couch.

Loki glances up at her. The marks on his neck and face are beginning to fade already. The advantages of being a god, she supposes. His eyes, though, still look as weary and haunted as when he woke up.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“I was about to ask you the same thing,” Loki says, gesturing to a pile of snickers and other junk food wrappers littering her side table and floor. “Are you taking the breakup particularly hard, or do you normally live like this?”

Heat prickles at Jane’s face and neck. It nettles her that Loki hit so close to the truth of it, without even trying. She thinks about trying to explain it to him, of all people. About the after-effects of the aether. About Darcy and Erik moving away. About the grants she’d lost. About how she’d slipped into an unrelenting, dark place she couldn’t get out of, and Thor, she thought with some guilt, hadn’t been the cause. He’d been a casualty of it.

The idea of trying to tell him any of it is laughable. She’d _rather die_.

“You don’t have to stay here, you know,” Jane says, picking up an empty Cheetos packet and shoving it in her pocket. “There’s a Radisson just down the road. I’m sure there will be lots of New Yorkers happy to see you again.”

Loki presses his lips together.

“This is fine. It’s charming really, for someone in the midst of a nervous breakdown.”

Jane exhales, hard. She looks up at her ceiling.

“Heimdall, if you can hear me, you can come and get him _any time_.”

She’s not serious, at least not entirely, but suddenly Loki’s hands are clenched, and his posture is rigid, like he’s been struck a blow, but she missed where it came from. Jane stills at the abrupt, and serious switch in his mood, and her stomach turns cold.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Loki says. Too quickly. “What day is it?”

“It’s Saturday. What just happened?”

“Nothing, I’m fine.”

Jane watches him carefully. There’s something different about him now. Not just in the way he reacted when she’d suggested Heimdall call him back, but ever since he’d woken up. He’s cold and arrogant, but it’s less intense somehow, less hard, like his sharp edges have been sanded down.

What had happened in the years since she’d seen him, to change him like that?

Jane opens her mouth to ask, when she hears something strange. It’s like two voices in the next room, distant and close at the same time. When she turns her head, they’re gone again.

“Did you hear that?” she asks.

Loki’s brow creases and the wound on his forehead opens up again, blood trailing a line down his temple.

“Hear what?”

“Nothing. I--” Jane shakes her head. “I’m going to-- I’ll go get a bandage for that cut. You should rest or something. If you want.”

Loki gaze follows her all the way to the door.

//

She goes to Wal-mart.

There's something pleasantly dull about lingering in a sterile, restless department store. The echoing, endless static of rushing strangers and bright fluorescent lights. Strangers who look right past the dishevelled woman in the hoodie and aviators, whose idle chatter softens the humming in Jane's head.  
  
She walks through the medicinal aisle a few times, before picking out a large packet of band-aids and some gauze tape.

Jane catches sight of herself in a mirror as she’s weaving her way back toward the checkouts. As she slows, her reflection shudders and blurs. The person looking back at her isn’t her. In the mirror, she’s wearing a deep, rich red velvet gown with gold trimming. Her reflection gazes right past her, pulling her hair back from her face. There are purple and blue bruises up her neck and on the side of her face, and dark shadows under her eyes. She lets her hair fall forward again, and gently brushes out the knots.

Jane stumbles away from the mirror and picks up the first thing she sees next. Some kind of potted plant she doesn't need or want, and she drags it out to her car.

Skies are grey all the way home.  
  
//

It’s a struggle to get the pot plant up the stairs to her apartment, and Jane’s irritable and breathless when she gets inside. Loki is perched on her sofa with one of her textbooks and looks up only briefly when she comes in.

“Welcome back.”

Jane puts the box of band-aids and gauze down on her side table and looks around, confused. Her floor is now, suspiciously, free of snack debris. “Did you... clean up or something?”

“Just this room,” Loki says without looking up.

Jane stares at him, speechless. After a moment he looks at her again.

“I had some concerns about tripping and suffocating in a drift of Rita’s Pieces packets.”

“Reese’s Pieces,” Jane corrects him.

Loki shrugs and then turns his attention to the potted plant Jane is holding.

“What is that?”

“It’s a fern,” Jane says, as if it should be obvious. As if buying plants is something she does normally.

“I see.”

“Stop it,” Jane snaps.

Loki looks around the room, puzzled.

“Stop what?”

“Just stop!” Jane is almost shouting. “Don’t do _anything_!”

She storms into her bedroom, dropping the fern on the floor, and closing the door behind her with a loud thud. The rain has started, droplets of water running lines down her window, and blurring the street outside into a fuzzy haze of colour and light.

A distant noise startles her, and Jane turns toward it. As she does her apartment slips away and a field, with long yellow grass, opens in front of her. She freezes, confused. A noise, like the one before, but louder, reaches her ears. Jane realises that it’s voices, low and happy, scattering around her like a warm breeze.

She takes a few steps forward, the stiff grass crunching under her feet, and she sees them. Thor and Sif, sitting in a small clearing a short distance away. Sif’s head is leaning against Thor’s chest, and his fingers are curled in her hair. Jane blinks, her face flushed. She takes a few more steps forward, but they don’t notice. Sif says something, and Thor laughs and leans down, pressing a gentle kiss to the top of her head.

Jane turns away, instinctively. The golden field and Thor and Sif fade away like a dream.

She’s back in her room; the only sounds are the tick of her bedside clock and the patter of rain against her window.

Her hands are fidgeting, restless when she walks out of her bedroom. Loki must see something in her expression because when he looks up at her, he puts the book down and straightens up.

“What is it?”

“Is this your idea of a joke?” Jane feels breathless and slightly dizzy. “Are you messing with me?”

Loki scrutinises her for a moment.

“I sense this isn’t about the candy detritus?”

“No. Something is happening to me. Are you doing this?”

“Doing _what_?”

Jane rakes a hand through her hair. Her mind racing.

“I saw Thor and Sif. They were in a field. I saw them when I was in my room, but I wasn’t in my room, I was somewhere else.”

Loki tilts his head at her.

“You’re not making any sense.”

“I know, but I--.” Jane starts to pace. “Okay, you know that feeling, when you walk from one room to another, but your mind hasn’t caught up yet? And it feels like you’re not really where you are, like you’re not really in your body? It was like that. It felt like that.”

“I don’t want to vex you while you’re in an evidently fragile state,” Loki says slowly. “But that made even less sense than your previous explanation.”

“My body was in my room, but my mind. In my mind, I was somewhere else, in a field and Thor and Sif were there, and I think-- I think they’re together.”

Loki shakes his head, still not understanding.

“Together how?”

Her chest feels strange all of a sudden. She shouldn’t be jealous. She has no right to be.

“Like, romantically? I guess. I mean, I don’t know how to explain it.”

Loki stands up. “You don’t have to. Come here.”

Jane doesn’t move, eyeing him warily.

“Why?”

“If you come closer, I can look at your memories and see what you saw for myself.”

“You can do that?” Jane hesitates, pressing her hands together. “That seems kind of invasive.”

Loki rolls his eyes at her. He actually _rolls his eyes_.

“Yes, it is. That’s the _point_.”

The air in the room seems to change slightly. Something electric and uneasy needles at Jane’s skin. A warning. Don’t let him in. Don’t let him touch you.

“How do I know you’ll only see what I want you to see?”

Loki walks around the sofa toward her. Jane shrinks backward, involuntarily, and hopes he doesn’t notice.

“As riveting as I’m sure your memories of eating inordinate amounts of Rita’s Pieces in front of the television must be, I’ve no interest in recalling anything other than what you just saw.”

“They’re called _Reese’s_ Pieces,” Jane grits out, “you _moron_.”

Loki is beginning to look as annoyed as she feels.

“Do you want me to know what you saw, or not?”

“I don’t know.” Jane shrugs. She wouldn’t trust him to boil an egg, but she’s reluctantly fascinated by the idea of it; of what his magic can do, and what it might feel like. “I guess.”

“Sorry, I can’t tell, is that a yes?”

Jane nods and braces herself. Loki closes the space between them and presses his hand against her forehead. His palm is warm, and Jane realises how strange it was that she thought he’d be colder.

It doesn’t happen right away. For a few long moments, they stand there, silent and unmoving, in the middle of the living room. Then Jane feels a tug at the back of her mind, and suddenly the memories come rushing back all at once.

_The pot plant / The rain on her windows/ The golden field / long sheaths of grass swaying slightly in the breeze/ Thor and Sif in the clearing / wrapped in each other’s arms / laughing and smiling/ Thor leaning down to kiss the top of her head/_

Loki abruptly removes his hand. Jane stumbles a few steps backwards, dazed. When she can focus again, she looks up at him. He looks vaguely unsettled.

“Curious,” he says, after a beat.

“So? What do you think it was?”

“I don’t know. Have you had other apparitions like this?”

Jane thinks of the reflection of herself she saw in Wal-Mart, and the voices she thought she heard earlier.

“Some, I think. They weren’t like this one.” Jane pauses. “First, I just heard things, and then when I was out, I saw myself. But it wasn’t _me_. She looked like me, but she was different. She was hurt, I think.”

Loki scans her clinically, like someone might inspect a chair they’re thinking about buying.

A door slams somewhere outside and Jane jumps, putting her hand over her heart. She takes a moment to catch her breath.

“I feel like I’m going crazy.”

“It could be that,” Loki says. “Is there anything else?”

There’s something strange in his expression that puts Jane on edge.

“Like what?”

“Is there anything else I should know that might inform the situation?”

Jane’s jaw clenches a little involuntarily. A powerful, dark feeling stirs in her chest. She blinks hard. He doesn’t need to know, she decides.

It’s not related. It _couldn’t_ be. And even if it was--

“No,” she lies. “That’s everything I think.”

Loki watches her like he can see right through her, even without looking inside her head.

“Curious,” he says, again. Jane nods.

“It _is_ weird, right? The spaceship in the city today, you landing here out of nowhere, and now these visions? It can’t be a coincidence.”

“No, I wouldn’t think so.”

Jane shifts uneasily on her feet, trying to put the pieces together, her mind a muddled mess of questions. She feels lost, nauseous and completely out of her depth. She needs to talk to someone she knows. Someone she actually trusts.

Abruptly, Jane pulls open the drawer on her side table and digs through it, until she finds a fresh notebook and a pen. She can feel Loki lingering behind her; watching her.

“What are you doing now?”

Jane sits down on the sofa and opens her notebook on her lap, thumbing through the crisp, blank pages.

“I’m recording what’s been happening today, before I forget anything.”

“Ah,” Loki says. “How sensible.”

“Is sensible a bad thing?” Jane asks, absently.

“It’s just an observation.”

Jane turns to look at him.

“Do you have something you want to say, Loki?”

“I suppose I’m wondering why Thor and I keep being dropped in your purlieu.” Loki is visibly examining her, again. It makes Jane’s hair prickle at the back of her neck. “There’s nothing terribly noteworthy about you. You’re not at all powerful, or influential. Aside from your relative intelligence, and the occasional emotional outburst, you’re utterly uninspiring.”

Jane presses her fingers into the notebook, to stop herself from throwing it at him.

“Yeah, well,” she grits out. “I’d still rather be boring, than _you_.”

His eyes shine with barely repressed delight. He’s screwing with her, and she’s played right into his hands.

“Come now,” he whispers, conspiratorially. “We both know _that’s_ not true.”

Jane bites the inside of her lip, irritation gnawing at her. Her pen hovers over the blank paper.

“I’m going to see Erik after I’m done here. He’s working in Maryland. You can stay until you feel better, and then you should probably leave.”

Loki feigns disappointment.

“Oh no, and just when we were establishing a friendly rapport.”

“Just imagine it,” Jane looks up. “Soon you won’t have to see, or even _think_ about this boring human again.”

“Foster,” Loki smiles at her. “I’m barely thinking of you now.”

Jane sighs, more loudly than she’d have liked, and turns away from him and starts writing; scribbling the memories out as fast as she can recall them. Jotting down every last detail, and breaking each vision down into parts. Looking for any connection, or clue to what it all means, and coming up empty. In the end, the only constant thing she finds is Loki. All the things she’d seen and heard, it had started when he got here.

A painful, frustrating understanding dawns on her. Jane swears under her breath.

“Is something wrong?”

Loki’s sitting on the other end of the sofa, legs crossed. He’d moved so quietly she hadn’t even realised he was there. Stealthy, like a snake.

Jane sighs.

“I think you’re going to have to come with me.”

“That doesn’t sound right,” Loki says, lines creasing his forehead. “You just assured me I was going to be rid of you indefinitely. I wouldn’t have to see or think about you again, that’s what you said.”

Jane clenches and unclenches her teeth.

“I know what I said. But you’re a part of all this, I think. Whatever _this_ is.”

“And what about Selvig? I can’t imagine he will be overly pleased to see me.”

“That’s an understatement,” Jane can hear the sudden, hard edge in her voice. The resentment. She hates the idea of bringing Loki to Erik, of making him face someone who hurt him, in some ways irreversibly. “But I’ll talk to him. I’ll explain that I think it’s all related.”

Loki appears to contemplate it for a moment.

“If you think I must,” he says finally.

Jane doesn’t _really_ think that at all. If was only up to her, if she could forget Thor and everything on Svartalfheim, she’d probably kick him of her house and then call the cops. But she’s always been more curious than sensible, _despite_ what Loki had said, and she’s beginning to feel more and more certain that he landed in her kitchen today for a reason. She wants to know what it is.

Jane grabs her bag and her keys. After a pause, she grabs her notebook and pen, too, tucking them into the pocket of her hoodie.

“We should go then.” Jane glances at Loki’s armour. “That look is a little conspicuous, could you maybe-?”

“Right, of course,” Loki stands, and his armour blinks into a black suit. Hardly completely inconspicuous, but it’ll have to do. Jane gives him a lingering look and then heads out the door.

“All aboard for goth prom.”

“I was going to change into something more your style,” Loki says coolly, from behind her. “But I didn’t have any crumbs for my sweatshirt.”

Jane flips him off.

It’s probably going to be a long trip.

//

The first hour of the drive is quiet. Jane and Loki sit in detached silence broken only by the sounds of her old wipers screeching across her windscreen and her intermittent muttering at the traffic. The bad weather makes the roads slow and the day seem later than it is, as if she didn’t already feel disoriented enough.

“So,” Loki says, so suddenly that Jane startles slightly. “How is Selvig? What’s he doing these days?”

“Don’t do that,” Jane says, irritable. “Don’t talk about him like you’re friends. What you did to him almost destroyed him.”

“I was simply attempting small talk, but if you’d rather sit in silence for the duration of our little road trip, that’s quite alright with me.”

Jane flicks on her indicator and shifts into the next lane.

“Erik’s fine, no thanks _to you_ ,” she says, finally. “He’s doing some off the books work for the Research Centre in Annapolis. Darcy is assisting him.”

“Who?”

“Darcy, my friend,” Jane explains. “My intern. Well, she was my intern, now she’s Erik’s.”

“So, your only two friends, who are also your colleagues, have moved away?”

“They’re not my only two friends.”

“Oh?”

Jane tucks her hair behind her ear.

“I have loads of other friends it’s just, I’m kind of busy, you know? So, we’ve mostly, kind of dropped out of touch. I’ve wanted to be an astrophysicist for most of my life so-- I’ve always had the research. The work. I’ve never really had time for a whole lot of friends. Not outside of that, anyway. And I’m fine with it. It’s actually how I like it.”

Loki pauses.

“That is one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard.”

Jane frowns, gripping the steering wheel a little too tightly.

“I have friends, okay? Plenty of them. And I’m thinking about getting a dog.”

“Stop, you’re just making it worse.”

“Oh, come _on_ ,” Jane bites. “Like you’re winning any popularity contests. Is there anyone in your life you haven’t tried to kill yet?”

“Just the one,” Loki quips, his tone straddling both pleasant and threatening. Jane exhales loudly.

“You’re the most unlikeable person in the entire universe, I hope you know that.”

Loki is quiet, but only for a moment.

“I hear Thor dumped you.”

Straight for the jugular. Typical.

Jane briefly looks away from the road to shoot him a _look_.

“We’re not talking about that,” Jane says. “And just to clarify, it was mutual.”

“Yes, I heard that too.”

Jane shifts uncomfortably in her seat, her face hot. “How much did he tell you exactly?”

“Everything,” Loki smirks. “Every last, intimate detail.”

Jane wants to punch his unbearable, smug face. But she can’t do it without taking her hands off the wheel and possibly killing them both. (Would it be worth it?)

“No, he didn’t. Don’t be an asshole.”

“Did you love him?” He asks like he’s genuinely interested, but Jane knows he’s just asking to get under her skin. It’s working.  
  
“That’s none of your business.”

“It’s okay if you didn’t, he is quite dreadful.”

“Thor’s worth a thousand of you,” Jane snaps. It’s a little harsh, maybe. But it’s not exactly untrue.

Loki doesn’t respond, and Jane has a fleeting moment of hope that the conversation is over.

“If you did love him, why end it?”

_Goddamnit._

Jane sighs and rolls her window down slightly. The cool air is a balm for the skin on her face.

“You wouldn’t understand.”  
  
“You think I have not ever loved anyone?” Loki asks.

Jane stills. The question throws her, more than any other shitty thing he’s said to her today. Jane’s never spent much time considering Loki’s humanity, or lack thereof.  
  
“I mean, I was there on Svartalfheim,” Jane says, choosing her words carefully. “I know you think I probably don’t remember any of it, but I do and -- _fuck!_ ”  
  
She veers onto the side of the road and pulls up. The air around her flickers, in and out.

“I’m-- It's happening again,” Jane breathes, and instinctively reaches out, clutching Loki’s forearm. As she does her car disappears, and something else opens up in front of her.

It’s not like the golden field from before. The ground is barren, rocky, and the world is dark. She sees movement out of the corner of her eye and hears a scuttling sound, like insects on tiles. A dark figure in armour rushes toward a young girl, in a red dress. Then more of them, popping up seemingly from nowhere and rushing toward her. There are so many of them; they’re everywhere. Jane can feel her heartbeat pick up, panic starting to worm its way into her chest.

Then another noise breaks through the chittering and clicking, a roar of thunder. Bright light spreads out across the sky, familiar and brilliant, and the sight of it sends relief rushing through Jane like a wave.

Thor hits the ground in a flash of light, bent on one knee, Mjolnir raised aloft. But when the light fades, and her eyes can focus again, Jane realises it’s not Thor at all. It’s a woman, in silver and red, with long, blonde hair. So like him, but not him. Jane watches as she takes out the insect creatures one by one, lunging, dodging, swinging the hammer like it’s nothing. Like it’s the easiest thing in the world.

It’s over quickly. When the air stills, the woman takes off her helmet, and Jane can see her face.

The shock of it steals the breath from her lungs.

It’s her. It’s _her_ _face_. Looking right past her.

The woman’s knuckles are bloody, and she scans her surroundings again, before she turns again and heads toward the young girl.

“Who are you?” Jane asks, but the woman doesn’t hear her, and Jane’s voice fades away into nothing, like it’s being drowned out by the wind.

There’s a blare of a car horn and Jane flinches, before realising she’s back in her car again, on the side of the road. Her hand still gripping Loki’s forearm, vice-like. Jane lets go of him and leans back into the seat, her body thrumming with adrenaline.

“You won’t _believe_ what I just saw.”

“Was it some sort of cursed hybrid of you and my brother?” Loki’s voice is calm. “Because if so, I have some good news.”

Jane turns and stares at him, shocked.

“You saw it?”

He nods.

“When you accosted my arm. I think the physical contact somehow allowed me to see it too.”

“Like through my mind? Like before?”

Loki looks at her; renewed inquisitiveness etched in his features.

“No, not like that. I was just, there, like you were. I was standing right behind you.”

“But-- I didn’t see you.”

“Yes, I noticed that. You didn’t turn around once. I could have dispatched you rather effortlessly.”

“Why would you even—” Jane sighs. “Do you _know_ how to talk like a normal person?”

“Well, I _didn’t_ kill you, did I?”

He says it like he should be getting points for it. Jane licks her lips.

“Thanks for your restraint, I guess.”

Loki shrugs.

“You were distracted, and understandably so. It’s not often one comes face to face with a version of themselves from a parallel universe.”

Jane stares at him. Loki’s not smiling. There’s no humour there.

He’s serious.

“Is that what you think it was?”

“Yes,” Loki says, simply.

“Honestly?”

“It is possible that you have simply lost your mind, I suppose. But if that’s all it was there’s no reason I should have been able to see your hallucinations too.”

Jane shakes her head slowly.

“But that isn’t - It _can’t_ be that. I’ve spent years studying this stuff. That’s not how it works. The multiverse hypothesis is a fairytale for nerds.”

“I see,” Loki says, dryly. “Magic and Gods you have no qualms with, but infinite worlds is a bridge too far.”

Jane runs her hands across the steering wheel, letting the idea sink in a little. It’s crazy, but it would make sense of all the things she’s seeing. What he’s saying makes some sense, as much as she hates to admit it.

“Let’s pretend what you’re saying is true for a minute,” Jane says. “Let’s pretend that this incredible thing that changes _everything we know about ourselves_ is true. If they exist, why am I seeing glimpses of them? I shouldn’t be able to see them, right? So why am I, and why now?”

Loki looks at her with an intensity that makes her skin itch.

“That is the question, isn’t it? If the divide between our reality and other realities has been compromised why is boring, unimportant Jane Foster seeing it? What could possibly be the difference between you and everyone else, that affords you the ability to see these things?”

Jane's throat feels tight and dry.

“You’re saying it like I know.”

Loki doesn’t break eye contact. Waiting for her to say more. Waiting for an explanation.

Jane hesitates, the air in the car suddenly feeling thick and stifling. She can’t tell him. Not about this, not now. She can’t trust him; it’d put her, and everyone else on the planet at risk. There’s no way she can confide in him about this.

Jane turns the key in the ignition and pulls her old car back out onto the road with a stuttering lurch.

The tense silence that settles between them is heavier than the pouring rain.

//

An hour or so later, the fuel light comes on, and Jane pulls up at a gas station. Loki has fallen asleep. His head is tilted to the side and is resting against his shoulder; his dark hair is hanging across his face. Jane is unsettled, somehow, about how human he looks all of a sudden.  
  
She fills the tank, watching as the numbers clock higher. There’s something about how the dials spin, and the sound of the rain that makes her head feel tired and fuzzy. Jane stands there, unfocused, until the pump can’t feed any more fuel and groans under her hands, jerking her out of her stupor.

Jane pays for the gas before she realises Loki is gone. She’s confused when she spots the empty passenger seat, glancing back at the store to see if he’d gone in after her. Then another feeling breaks through the confusion, something instinctive, something like fear.

Jane reaches for the car door handle when she hears footsteps behind her. Jane looks up Loki is grasping a rock, as big as a bowling ball, in his hands.

She stares at him, blankly.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m sorry to have to do this,” Loki says, “But you’ve left me no choice.”

He leans back and hurls the rock at her.

Jane ducks, but she doesn’t need to. Her body has already reacted, and there is a wave of red, hot light that reverberates through everything around her. The rock is knocked right out of the air and hits the ground with a crack, somewhere near the front of her car.

Jane lifts her head.

“What _the fuck_ is wrong with you?”

Loki points a finger at her.

“I _knew_ it,”

“You just threw a rock at me!”

“I ventured it wouldn’t get anywhere near you, and I was right.”

“Loki-”

“Why wouldn’t you just tell me some remnant of it still lingered in you?”

Jane shakes her head.

“It’s not like that.”

“Hey there,” says a voice from behind them, and Jane looks up. It’s the cashier from the gas station. A young blonde woman, her brow furrowed with concern. “Ma’am, are you okay?”

Jane smiles, in a way that she hopes is reassuring. “I’m fine, thank you! It was just a funny um, prank, that’s all.”

Everything is great and _totally normal_ , Jane thinks. A mad Norse god did not just try to smash my head in with a rock.

The cashier eyes her, clearly uncertain. Jane smiles awkwardly until her face hurts, and eventually, the woman nods and heads back inside.

Loki is much closer to her now, and when he speaks his voice is hushed.

“Foster, the aether possesses the power to bend the very fabric of reality. It is far more powerful than mere magic. If you have even a breath of it left in you, there may be very little limit to what you can do.”

“It’s not-- It isn’t in me. Not anymore. When Malekith took it, he took it all.” Jane sighs, and leans against her car, her hands shaking. “But when it _was_ , for those few days, it did something to me. It--”

“It changed you,” Loki finishes for her. “Into something _more_ than human. Into someone who can do and _see_ things others can’t _._ ”

She’s been avoiding thinking about it for so long, it’s almost a relief to hear someone say it out loud.

“Something like that. Look, it doesn’t matter right now.”

“Of course it does, you’re talking about absorbing part of one of the most powerful elements in the known universe,” Loki tilts his head at her slightly. “Do you really not understand what you might be capable of? Or do you know, and you’re too scared to think about what it means?”

Jane shakes her head. “I’m not-- I just-- honestly, I thought it would go away, but it didn’t, and it just keeps getting stronger, and now these visions--.”

“Thanos must be close to getting them all,” Loki says, suddenly visibly animated. He starts to pace beside her car. “The infinity gauntlet transcends reality, time and space, so every timeline, every universe is under threat. The walls between dimensions are breaking down. And you can _see it happening because of the reality stone_ , because of its connection to y--.”

Jane glowers at him. She can see it dawn on Loki, too late, what he just said.

“Who’s Thanos?”

“I’m sorry?” Loki asks, feigning ignorance. As if she’s _that stupid_.

Jane reflexively curls her hands into fists.

“ _You said_ you didn’t remember what happened before you landed here.”

Loki grins, but it’s awkward. Not quite all there.

“I said I didn’t _know_ what happened to me. A small distinction, but a vital one.”

Jane shakes her head.

“You never stop lying, do you?”

“That’s a rather disingenuous question,” Loki says, evenly. “Coming from the woman I just had to _throw something at_ to force her to tell me the truth.”

Jane scowls at him. She digs her fingernails into her palms so hard it hurts.

“Why are you still here, Loki? Why not call Heimdall and just _go away_?”

“Do you actually believe I _enjoy_ being here with you?” Loki snarls, losing his composure. “Do you not think I would take that door if it were open to me?! It’s _not possible, Foster!_ ”

“Why _not?!_ ” Jane yells back at him.

Loki’s expression shutters suddenly.  
  
“Asgard is gone. It burned.”  
  
Jane stills, staring uncomprehendingly at him. It must be another trick. It _has_ to be.  
  
“I don’t believe you.”  
  
“Heimdall is dead,” Loki’s voice is flat. “Odin is dead. The Warriors Three are dead. Thor and Sif are probably dead too.”  
  
“You’re a liar,” Jane spits.  
  
Loki lunges toward her. Jane turns to run, but he’s too fast. He catches her wrist, spinning her around and pressing his hand against her forehead. Red light clouds her eyes, but before she can react, the memories, _his_ memories come rushing in.  
  
_Odin fading into luminescent sparks/ A woman emerging from black smoke/ Burning/ Asgard ablaze, exploding in a swell of bright light/ A ship in the dark, tearing another in two/ Screams/ Death everywhere/ More fire/ Destruction/ Thor’s howls of pain/ The tesseract / Light / Death/ Darkness/ Thor pinned and gagged/ Thanos’ hand around Loki’s throat/ Blood and water blurring his eyes/ Bones breaking/ Shadows_  
  
Jane jerks out of Loki’s grasp, gasping for air.  
  
“Oh god,” she breathes. “Oh my god.”  
  
“It’s alright, they’re just memories.”  
  
Jane lets out a bitter laugh, tears running wet tracks down her face. “But they’re all gone. Everything--All of them-- It’s all gone.”  
  
Something raw and unguarded flickers briefly through Loki’s eyes, but he says nothing. Jane’s hand goes involuntarily to her throat. The bruises on his neck, the look in his eyes when he’d landed here, finally make sense.

“Loki, why did y--?”  
  
A loud rumble of thunder unrolls above their heads, drowning her out. It starts to rain again. Loki glances up at the grey clouds above them.  
  
Jane knows what he’s looking for. For years, she had looked every time.

She fumbles with her keys and gets back into the car, slamming the car door behind her. In the still, stale air of her car, Jane realises her hands are shaking. She can still see the light as Asgard had imploded, still feel what he’d felt as it had happened. Loki’s fear, when Thanos had lifted him off his feet sits heavy and real in her chest.

Loki slips wordlessly back into the passenger seat, and Jane turns her face away and wipes her eyes with her sleeve.

“Are they all dead?” Jane’s voice is thin, wavering at the edges.

Loki looks at her.

“Half of the remaining Aesir on the ship were allowed to live. They escaped, as far as I could tell.”

Jane remembers the children she’d seen playing in the courtyard when Thor had taken her to Asgard, of their parents who’d watched them, the contentment on their faces. All dead, or somewhere out in the endlessness of space.

“What’s his plan?” Jane takes a breath, trying to steady herself. “What is Thanos going to do when he gets all the infinity stones?”

“What he always does,” Loki tells her. “End life.”

“And you knew him, before.”

It’s not a question.

_If you call failure experience._

“Yes,” Loki responds, shortly. He’s unwilling, or unable to elaborate.

“So, how do we stop him?”

“We don’t. If he’s already obtained several of the stones, we are as good as dead.”

Jane can see the fear in the creases of Loki’s frown. His memories are still lingering in her mind, of Thanos’ cold, blank eyes, and she feels it too, all the way to her bones.

“But we should try, shouldn’t we? We can’t just wait and--”

Jane stops. She can feel the air around her shifting and twisting again.

“No, _no_. Not now.”

She reaches out, and Loki’s hand grabs her wrist before the world slips away.

It’s not her universe, but it’s a universe she knows. Jane feels a deep swell of sadness as the familiar sight of the gold and silver towers of Asgard open up in front of her, somehow larger and more breathtaking than they’d seemed to her before. She sees the familiar, silvery plains of Idavoll, and in the centre can make out movement; people in fine armour milling slowly into Gladsheim.  
  
Jane turns around. Loki is there, just a few steps behind her. His eyes meet hers, and he tries to give nothing away, but his jaw muscles clench a little, betraying him.

Jane inclines her head in the direction of the hall, and Loki nods.  
  
There is raucous, joyous cheering, and all attention is on Odin and Frigga’s arrival as Jane steps into the enormous, golden-thatched space. Another twinge, of something old and painful, runs through her at the sight of Frigga. She can’t bring herself to look back at Loki to see if he’s seen her too.  
  
It takes her a moment, but Jane sees another Loki - this universe’s Loki - standing at the top of the hall, in front of Odin’s throne, shifting nervously on his feet. He’s resplendent in gold and green; his hair tucked neatly behind his ears underneath his helmet. He doesn’t look quite as unhinged as the Loki Jane knows. Or maybe he’s just better at hiding it.  
  
“What’s going on?” Jane asks quietly as Loki catches up with her.  
  
“Your guess is as good as mine.”  
  
“A coronation?”

“Highly unlikely,” Loki’s unable to hide the bitterness in his voice. “Unless Thor doesn’t exist in this univer--”  
  
A trumpet sounds, drowning him out. By the way the Other Loki straightens up Jane can tell the ceremony, whatever it is, is beginning. Attention shifts to the other end of the room, and Jane cranes her neck to see what everyone is looking at. She can see a woman approaching them now, in a floral crown, and a long white and blue dress. She’s strangely familiar, Jane realises. Too familiar.  
  
_Oh god._  
  
Jane stumbles back a step as she realises who it is. It’s _her_. This universe’s Jane.

This is a wedding, and it’s not Thor she’s marrying.

Jane glances back at Loki. He’s staring, transfixed, at the Other Jane, his mouth slightly open in shock. Jane watches the other version of herself walk slowly to the front of the hall. She’s radiant with joy. When she meets the Other Loki by the throne, they clasp hands and exchange a gentle kiss.

“Come _on_ ,” Jane protests weakly. “What the hell?”  
  
Loki doesn’t say anything, but his expression has morphed from shock to one of visible distaste. When he catches her gaze, he frowns at her a little, like it’s _her_ fault.  
  
“Is an arranged marriage out of the question?” Jane asks, a little desperately.  
  
Loki seems to consider it.

“It doesn’t seem likely. I can’t imagine even Odin has so little regard for me as to burden my existence with you.”  
  
“Oh, that’s funny,” Jane snaps. “Because you’re a _great_ catch.”  
  
She directs her attention back to the front of the hall where the other versions of them have begun to exchange vows. They barely look like two people being watched by a crowd of thousands, there’s a visible affection between them that is evident even from the very back of the hall. Jane watches as the Other Loki takes the Other Jane’s hand and kisses the back of it, and then leans down and whispers something against her ear that makes her smile.  
  
“I want to go,” Jane says. “This universe is stupid.”  
  
Loki slowly shifts his gaze away from the ceremony and gives her a serene smile.

“You don’t want to wait and see the wedding night?”

Jane shoots him a dark look.

“You’re gross.”

Loki’s smile gets a little wider. He gestures to the front of the hall.

“Evidently, you like that.”

Jane knows he’s just trying to provoke her. She knows she’s playing right into his hands, _again_. She _knows_. The anger flares up anyway.

“Don’t act like we’re the same,” Jane points at the Other Jane. “She’s nothing like me.”

“She looks a little like you.”

“That’s not _my point_.”

Loki’s smile finally fades.

“What is your point, Foster?”

“When I look at you, do you want to know what I see? The _only_ thing I see?”  
  
“I think you’re going to tell me.”  
  
“I see buildings crumbling, people screaming, running terrified for their lives. Dying in the streets, because of _you_.” She’s ranting now, but she can’t seem to stop. “I see Erik, lost in his mind for months because of what _you did to him_.”  
  
Loki’s gaze has turned hard.  
  
“So just, save your jokes, okay?” Jane continues, crossing her arms over her chest. “I’ll be your ally against Thanos because it’s the right thing to do, but I’m not your friend.”  
  
“I don’t know why you’re labouring under the misguided idea that I _wish_ to be your friend,” Loki says, shrugging. “You’re my brother’s old plaything, your existence is insignificant to me.”  
  
The words are ugly, but they’re hardly unexpected. Jane bites back all the horrible things she wants to call him, her blood hot with anger and frustration, and breathes out slowly. A cool draught, from the open hall doors, presses against her skin. Shouting at Loki isn’t going to bring Asgard back, she reminds herself. It’s not going to stop her from seeing these things. It’s not going to save anyone, now.  
  
“Do you regret any of it?” Jane asks before she can stop herself.

Loki glares at her.

“What does it matter? It’s _done_.”

The hall tremors, and blinks away. She’s back in her car again, at the gas station. Loki’s back in the passenger seat, looking away from her.

Jane starts the car, hands trembling slightly, and pulls back out onto the highway.

//

The upside, if there was an upside to what she just saw, is that Loki _doesn’t_ try to talk to her again the rest of the way to Erik’s. He barely even looks at her, watching the world fly by them out the window in a messy blur of green and browns and greys. Eyes glassy and distant.

Jane wonders, idly, if he’s trying to work it out too. How that universe they just saw ended up in such a wholly different place to this one. Whether it was a multitude of different decisions and circumstances, or just a single, crucial one.

Jane can’t imagine a life where she could genuinely have any warm feelings toward Loki. She _really_ couldn’t imagine a life where Loki could love anyone romantically, let alone openly, in public.

Jane glances at him again. He notices this time, shooting her an irritated look.

There must have been a _lot_ of different things that transpired. Jane supposes, that if she could be the God of Thunder in one universe, then surely there can be a universe where Loki’s not a maladjusted sociopath. Or he is, and she’s... into that? It’s not exactly one of the official laws of probability, but she’ll take it.

Jane thinks about it for so long, by the time she pulls into Erik’s driveway, she’s almost forgotten the world is ending.

“Wait here,” Jane says, turning the ignition off. “I want to warn Erik that you’re here, before he sees you.”

“Alright.” Loki sounds distinctly bored.

Darcy opens the door, and her face lights up when she sees her.

“Jay!” she squeaks, hugging Jane tightly and pulling her, bodily, into the hallway. “It’s so great to see you! Erik! _Erik_! Come see who it is!”

Jane laughs. “It’s good to see you too. It’s been a while--”

“Jane!” Erik says, his face appearing over Darcy’s shoulder. “What a wonderful surprise!”

He scoops her up in a hug, and for some reason, Jane’s throat tightens up like she’s about to cry. She’s missed this. She’s missed them so much.

“I’m afraid this isn’t a social call,” Jane says, reluctantly.

“Is this about the thing in New York?” Darcy asks. She points at Erik knowingly. “I told you it wasn’t just another Avengers fight, I told you there was something gnarly about that.”

“Yes and no.”

Jane hesitates.

“What is it, Jane?” Erik’s brow furrows with concern. “Are you okay?”

Jane takes a long breath. She feels like she has a ticking bomb strapped to her chest, and that telling them the truth is going to set it off and hurt them both.

“Thor’s brother, Loki?” Jane says. “He isn’t dead. He, uh, sort of, showed up in my kitchen.”

Darcy stares at her, wide-eyed, in mute shock. Erik braces his hand against the nearby side table and closes his eyes. Jane takes an instinctive step closer to him.

“Are you kidding?” Darcy says, after a long pause.

“I—No. I didn’t drive for four hours to tell you a joke.”

“It’s good that you came to us,” Erik says, moving around her, and shutting and then locking the door. He put his hands on the sides of her face. “You should stay as far away from him as possible.”

“Yeah, about that.” Jane cringes internally. “He’s in my car.”

“ _What?!_ ” Erik and Darcy shout in unison.

“It’s okay!” Jane holds her hands up. “He’s not trying to take over Earth again. At least I don’t think he…”

Jane trails off as Darcy, and then Erik disappear in different directions, their footsteps echoing down the wooden hallway.

“Guys...?”

After a moment, Darcy reappears with a baseball bat in her hands. And then Erik after her, wielding a kitchen knife.

Jane grimaces a little.

“Okay, I don’t think that’s entirely necessary.”

“He’s a dangerous man, Jane,” Erik says, his eyes furtive. “More dangerous than you can imagine.”

Jane knows exactly how dangerous Loki is. But she doesn’t blame Erik, or Darcy for being for being overly cautious. She should be more scared of him than she is; she would be if she were smarter. If she hadn’t spent so much time with Thor, who was willing to give him every chance in the world to redeem himself.

 _If he hadn’t eventually done exactly that,_ a little voice at the back of her mind traitorously reminds her.

So, she nods.

“I’ll go get him,”

“We’re coming with you,” Darcy insists. Erik nods.

Jane smiles at them. She wants to hug them both. She wants to go inside and make them tea and talk about their work, and exchange awful, obscure astronomy jokes, and forget everything about this nightmare of a day.

But that isn’t an option any more. Not after everything she’s seen.

“You can come, but try to stay calm okay? It’s a long story, but there’s a bigger enemy at play here. I don’t think he’s here by choice.”

Darcy looks unconvinced. Erik is eyeing the doorway warily, and she’s not even sure he heard her.

Jane opens the door and heads back down the driveway. Loki is leaning against the side of the car, arms crossed. He looks up when they approach.

“How delightful, it’s both your friends.” He glances at the baseball bat Darcy is wielding. “And they’re happy to see me.”

“See?” Jane says to Erik and Darcy. “He’s just being unpleasant, he’s hardly homicidal at all.”  
  
“Give it time,” Loki smiles.  
  
Darcy, strangely, darts past her and peers into the back seat of her car.  
  
“Darcy?” Jane says, perplexed.  
  
Erik walks all the way to the end of the driveway and looks both ways down the street.  
  
“Where is he, Jane?” Erik’s voice is anxious.  
  
Jane blinks.

“Are you kidding? You just walked past him. He’s--.”  
  
Darcy reappears by her shoulder, scanning their surroundings. “Do you think he left? That’s probably for the best, right?” She gives Jane a rattled glance. “I mean, for us, anyway.”  
  
Jane lets out a nervous laugh, not understanding. “No, he’s still-- Are you guys messing around with me or something?”  
  
Erik and Darcy exchange a troubled glance.  
  
Loki is strangely quiet all of a sudden.  
  
“Jay, are you feeling okay?” Darcy asks.  
  
Jane can feel her skin getting heated, panic starting to worm its way into her chest.  
  
“I’m fine. What’s going on? Is this a joke?” Jane looks at Loki. “Are _you_ doing this?”

Loki shakes his head.  
  
Erik moves close to her and takes her hand in his. His eyes crinkle at the corners.

“Jane, there’s nothing here. Loki’s not here.”  
  
“What are you talking about? He’s _right there_ -”  
  
Loki strides across the driveway toward them. Jane straightens up, but Darcy and Erik don’t look at him, they don’t move away; they don’t even flinch. Loki reaches out, and his hand touches Erik’s shoulder, and Erik doesn’t react at all. Not even a wince.

Jane stares at Loki, open-mouthed. Her stunned expression mirrored in his.  
  
“Oh,” Loki says.  
  
Jane thinks, suddenly, of the cashier at the gas station, who’d only ever spoken to or looked at her.

She thinks of the way she had noticed after he’d landed in her kitchen, how he didn’t seem quite the same as the Loki she’d met before. Different. _The edges sanded down_.

“You’re not him.”  
  
“Jane,” Erik says again, but Jane waves him away.  
  
“Just give me a second,” Jane looks back at Loki. He’s over by her car again, his back toward her. “You’re _not him_ , you’re like all the other visions. You’re from a different univ--”  
  
“Jane, please,” Darcy begs.  
  
“It’s fine,” Jane insists, but Darcy grabs her arm tightly at the wrist and pulls her around.  
  
“It’s not fine! You’re hallucinating your ex-boyfriend’s evil, dead brother, and having a conversation with him in the driveway!”  
  
She has a point.  
  
“You really can’t see him?” Jane asks again, subdued. Hoping against all possible logic, that it’s a terrible joke all three of them are somehow in on.  
  
Erik and Darcy look at her helplessly, and it’s all the confirmation she needs.  
  
“Okay, _fuck._ Fuck _._ This complicates things.” Jane looks up at Loki again, he still has his back to her, and for some reason it makes her feel more adrift than she already does.

“I need to think, I can’t-- Can I use your bathroom for a minute?”

“Of course, Jane,” Erik says, softly. “Anything you need.”

He and Darcy follow her closely, gently ushering back into the house.

Jane goes straight to the bathroom and closes the door behind her, trying to control her breathing. She looks at her reflection in the mirror. _This is insane_ , she tells herself, _you’re insane_. Jane splashes her face with water until she starts to feel human again.  
  
When she steps out of the bathroom, she can hear Erik and Darcy speaking in hushed voices in the next room. Their words are barely audible, but she can hear the fretting in their voices. Intuitively, Jane stops where she is, and listens.

“... you can’t. We can’t do that to her.”

“You saw her out there, she’s out of her mind.”

“But doing that? She’d never forgive us. I can’t.”

“What if the delusion leads her into traffic, or off the side of a ten-story building? I’d rather her mad at us, than dead. Wouldn’t you?”

Jane can feel her heart thudding in her ears, her face starting to spike with heat. She takes a quiet step forward, so she can hear them better.

“Of course, but what if she’s really seeing him? We’ve seen some spooky, messed up stuff before, is this that far outside of the realms of possibility?”

“I can’t take that chance. You know she hasn’t been the same since… since...” Erik’s voice falters.

“Since the aether,” Darcy finishes for him.

Jane’s heard enough. She turns, as soundlessly as she can and tiptoes out the front door, closing it behind her with a dull click, and lets a huff of air escape from her lips. Jane dashes to her car and slides into the driver’s seat. Loki opens the passenger door and peers in at her.

“What’s going on now?”

“I’m about to get committed,” Jane snaps, blinking back tears. “Get in.”

Loki does, and Jane backs out and drives away, fast, without looking back.

//

She picks a direction and drives in it. Jane can’t go home, she knows that much. It’s where Erik and Darcy will go looking for her first. She doesn’t know where she’s going; she just knows she needs time to think. To work out what the hell is going on, and what to do about it.

Her cell starts vibrating in her pocket, and she doesn’t need to look to know who it is. She lets it go to voicemail. Only minutes later it goes off again, and Jane can feel her breathing begin to get faster and increasingly ragged. She’s struggling to control it, and she can’t focus on the road. Jane pulls over to the side of the curb with a screeching halt.

“Foster?” Loki asks, alarmed.

Jane ignores him, getting out of the car and stumbling into the grass on the side of the road. She feels lost. Like she’s trapped underwater. Like she doesn’t know who she is anymore. Like she’s somewhere else, and somebody else.

Loki gets out of the car, the door slamming behind him.

“Maybe they’re right,” Jane breathes. Her face is sweltering. She grabs at her throat trying to loosen the collar of her hoodie. “Maybe I am crazy.”

“I’ll be honest, you _do_ seem to be heading in that direction at the moment,” Loki says, cautiously edging closer to her.  
  
“I don’t understand why this is happening. I don’t know why I’m seeing these things.” Jane clutches at her chest now, her breathing coming in loud, uncontrollable gasps. “Am I hallucinating? Am I dreaming? Am I dead? Are we _dead_?”  
  
“Foster, _breathe_.” Loki braces her shoulders and holds her still. “Listen to me; whatever this is, wherever I’m supposed to be, I _am_ here right now. This is real. Look--” He roughly grabs her hand, pressing her fingers against the middle of his chest. “Do you feel that? You’re awake.”  
  
Jane can feel the soft thud of his heartbeat against her fingers, and her panic slows and gradually begins to ease up a little. She keeps her fingers pressed against his chest for a little longer, until her heartbeat’s pace almost matches his.  
  
For now, it’s enough.

“Do you feel it?” Jane asks, after a little while. “My hand, I mean. Does it feel... normal?”

Loki nods. She reaches out to touch the bruise on his neck, and he flinches away. Jane puts her hands back in her lap, and she narrows her eyes at him.  
  
“What _are_ you?”  
  
“You know what I am, Foster. You said it yourself.”

She knows. She’d known as soon as his hand touched Erik’s shoulder. Loki’s like all the other things she saw today, an echo of a parallel world; of something that could or should have been, a shadow of a life that she’d never know.

“But if you’re here, and you’re from another universe, then the Loki from our timeline is-”

“He’s dead.”

He doesn’t flinch, but she does.

“You can’t know that.”

Loki’s eyes are clear. He brushes a strand of hair away from his face.

“No, but think it through, Foster. Our universes were so similar we didn’t even realise we weren’t from the same one. We have all the same memories of each other, you and I. Then I landed in your kitchen, of all places. Why do you think that is?”

Jane presses her hands into the blades of grass, they bend and graze against her palms.

“The quantum multiverse theory,” she says slowly, as fragments of the puzzle slide together. “Relative state formulation. A diversion in events on Thanos’ ship that created a new universe.”

“Precisely,” Loki confirms. “Like branches on a tree. I believe, somehow, the break between our two universes started there. With the walls between universes breaking down, instead of our universes diverging-”

“They converged,” Jane finishes for him. “You ended up here, but you’re not meant to be. That’s why they can’t see you. It’s why, when I see the other universes, they don’t see me.”

Loki nods, just once.

“So, you understand.”

“It doesn’t mean he’s dead,” Jane insists, unwilling to give in. “We’re talking infinite universes here. Endless possible outcomes. It could have been any decision, any slight variation. There could be more than one universe where you survived Thanos. There should be thousands.”

“You’re right,” Loki says. “But why did I end up in your kitchen, and he didn’t?”

Jane can’t answer that. A cold feeling settles over her. She can’t say why, or how, but there’s an unshakeable kernel of something deep inside her that knows he’s right. The Loki she’d known from before, who’d destroyed New York, who’d smiled at her with that strange, malicious curiosity, who’d saved her life on Svartalfheim, was gone for good.

“There _is_ a way you can know for sure. If you wish to.”

He’s talking about her powers. Jane shakes her head.

“I can’t. I don’t know how to control it.”

“It’s like anything else, you need to _want_ to.” Loki looks up. “Though I daresay that on the side of the road in full public view isn’t the best place to start. We should move on.”

Jane nods. Loki starts to head back to her car.

“Loki,” Jane says suddenly. “When this is all over, when the Avengers defeat Thanos, you’ll just, disappear again?”

Loki stops and looks back at her, his expression impenetrable.

“ _If_ the Avengers defeat Thanos, then yes, your universe and all the other universes should right themselves.”  
  
The thought unsettles her more than it should. Loki can’t know why, but he must see something in her face because when he speaks again, his voice is less hard than usual.  
  
“He didn’t suffer very long. It was quick in the end.”  
  
Jane nods, but she’s thinking of the bruises on Loki’s neck when he’d first landed in her kitchen; the dark, haunted look when he’d opened his eyes, and she can’t quite make herself believe him.

//

Jane pulls onto the 50, and for lack of any better ideas, heads for DC.

Loki is quiet. He doesn’t even ask why they’re heading in the opposite direction to where they came from. Jane guesses that now they know what they do, it doesn’t make much difference to him anyway. She’s the only person who can see him; they’re stuck with each other until they work something out. Or the universes manage to right themselves somehow.

It’s a strange feeling sitting beside him, knowing he’s from a parallel world. One so like hers, but completely separate, until now. It’s strange too, in a different way, knowing he came with her on this road trip by choice, and now there wasn’t an alternative one. That in this life, for now at least, she’s all he has.

It’s not exactly something she’s happy to be saddled with. But she can console herself with the fact that Loki’s probably not very happy about it either.

 _You’re my brother’s old plaything_ , he’d said. _Your existence is insignificant to me_.

Funny, how fate sometimes takes the things you say and laughs at them.

It’s raining again and beginning to get dark, by the time they get to the outskirts of DC. Jane pulls into the first hotel she sees, a homey, 80’s looking brick building, with floral curtains and a red neon sign flashing _Vacancy_ out the front.

Jane hands over her credit card, takes the room with two single beds and doesn’t bother trying to explain why. Loki’s waiting for her when she gets back out to her car, his mouth worried into a slight frown, as if the gravity of his situation has finally sunken in.

“We’re in seven,” Jane says. “Are you hungry? There’s a vending machine in reception. Or I could order something.”

“Whatever you like,” Loki says, barely looking at her. His sudden, apparent despondency is unnerving, and she doesn’t want to ask what’s bothering him, in case it’s another catastrophic problem she hasn’t recognised they have yet. So, Jane pretends not to notice and heads for their hotel room.

The space is plain and cold. Low wattage lights and muted grey and brown furnishings, more or less exactly what she expected. Jane is hit by a wave of fatigue that is almost overpowering as she snaps the door closed behind them, but she resists the urge to lie down. She needs to eat something, and they need to work out what they are going to do next.

Loki settles into a chair in the corner of the room, saying nothing.

Jane tucks the keys into her jean pocket and picks up her cell.

 _18 missed calls_. _12 voice messages_.

Jane doesn’t listen to the messages. She can’t. She puts her phone back down on the table and heads for the door again.

“I’m going to go get some ice,” she says.

She’s barely two steps out the door when Jane feels the earth underneath her shudder. It’s been hours since the last parallel universe, and this one takes her by surprise. She stumbles, falling to her hands and knees, before everything blinks out.

This world is dark and freezing cold.

Jane’s in a round, sunken courtyard. A creature she doesn’t recognise, larger than any man she’s ever seen, with blue skin and red eyes is sitting on a throne-like seat at the top of it, flanked by six equally huge creatures. There are stains on the dark stone ground and an array of grotesque, twisted metal weapons on the wall behind them.

Another vividly blue creature, like the rest of them, but smaller, is standing in chains in front of them. He shifts slightly and the metal rattles at his feet.  
  
“You lied to me, son.” The man on the throne says. “You betrayed your people, for the Aesir of all things, our sworn enemies.”  
  
The smaller one squares his shoulders but doesn’t say anything.  
  
“It is a shame,” The man on the throne nods to one of the largest men on his left, who lifts an axe from the wall and heads toward the small one. Two of the other large creatures follow him.  
  
Jane gets to her feet and instinctively takes a few steps backward. The smaller blue one glances in her direction briefly, looking for a way out, and as soon as she sees his face, she recognises him. It’s Loki. This universe’s Loki. His skin is marked, and blue and his eyes are red like the rest of them, but it’s him.  
  
The large guard advances on him; axe raised to strike. The other two begin to circle Loki like sharks, boxing him in. Loki’s chained fists are clenched and raised defiantly, even as he must know it’s useless against that axe. Jane takes a few more steps backward, a deep, helpless feeling spreading through her and her heart thudding against her chest as she realises what she’s about to witness.  
  
Then something astounding happens.

There is movement to her left. Jane glimpses Sif coming over the top of the wall, sword brandished and then, another Jane - this universe’s Jane - another wilder, scrawnier version of herself dropping down just behind her, knocking out one of the guards with the blunt end of her sword. More warriors come over the wall after them, one after the other.

Jane watches, transfixed, as they spread out and attack. The Other Jane throws the Other Loki a knife, which he catches easily even with his wrists in chains. There’s a quick flash of light, and the man with the axe is stumbling backward; the handle of the knife is protruding from the middle of his chest. Jane watches as Loki pulls the dagger out of the creature’s breast and takes out another guard attempting to contain him with one sharp, swift stroke. Behind him, chaos, as Sif and Jane and the rest of the warriors from this universe are fighting back more emerging soldiers one by one.

The earth shudders again, and in an instant, Jane is back on the ground by the hotel door. A hand touches her shoulder, and she jumps, hard.

“It’s just me,” Loki says. “Are you alright?”

Jane breathes out.

“I just saw another universe,” she says, getting slowly to her feet. She looks up at him. “Loki, I think I was in Jotunheim.”

Loki looks startled. He takes a step away from her.

Thor had told her of Loki’s origins one night a long time ago. It had seemed almost romantic the way he’d told it; an orphaned Jotun baby plucked out of the cold and ice by royalty and secreted away to a new, privileged life. Standing in front of Loki now, with that sudden vulnerability in his eyes, with what she’d just seen unfold burned into her mind, Jane thinks that maybe she never really understood the reality of what Thor was telling her. Or why he was telling her at all.

“Come inside,” Loki says, and disappears back into the hotel room.

Jane dusts the dirt off her knees and then follows.

Loki is distracted and pacing in a circle, one end of the room to the other.

“I have been thinking,” he says. “Last time I was here, on Midgard, I met a sorcerer called Strange. If we can find him, perhaps between the three of us we can work out a plan of attack.”

“Okay, sure,” Jane says. “That’s great, but d--”

“I don’t remember where he is located, but perhaps if I cast a--”

“Loki?”

He stops, looking up.

“What?”

“Don’t you want to know what I saw?”

Loki shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“But I saw Jotunheim. And I saw you. You were there, and your biological father--”

“ _Enough_!” Loki snarls. The hotel rooms lights flicker. “That’s enough!”

Jane flinches.

“Okay. Calm _down_.”

Loki turns on her suddenly, his eyes fierce and terrifying.

“Did it frighten you, Foster? To see it? To see what I _really_ am?”

“ _No,_ ” Jane insists. “Just _stop_ , okay? You’re acting like a--”

Jane stops just short of saying the word, but it’s not soon enough.

Loki takes a step toward her, an unkind darkness settling over him.

“Like a monster?”

He transforms in front of her eyes. His skin shifts to a dark marked blue, eyes glowing red.

Jane shakes her head at him.

“Stop it.”

“I have been wondering, Foster.” Loki pauses. “If you die, do I return to my universe? Does my life become my own once again?”

The implication wounds more than it should, but Jane refuses to let him see it. Heat rushes her face, and for once, she embraces the swell of anger building inside her.

“If you’re going to threaten to kill me,” Jane snaps, “You should remember what you’re dealing with.”

She seizes Loki’s wrist. His cold skin burns, and an explosion of red light bursts from her, throwing him across the room and slamming him into the wall with a loud crack. Jane is knocked back too, with the force of it, and she hits the tiled floor so hard it stops the air in her lungs.

Jane lies there for a moment, letting herself catch her breath. When she lifts her head, Loki has transformed back to his Asgardian form and is sitting against the wall on the opposite side of the room. The anger is gone. He’s just watching her, warily. Jane gets to her feet slowly, her muscles aching. There’s a welt on her hand where she grabbed his bare skin.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Loki says.

“It’s fine, it’ll heal in a minute.” Jane runs a finger lightly over the scarred skin. “Sometimes it takes a little while.”

“Why didn’t the aether stop your skin from burning?”

Jane lets out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.

“You’re forgetting, the aether isn’t _in me_ anymore. This, whatever power this is, it doesn’t always work the same way. It seems to be linked to my senses. It sees what I see. If it happens too fast, if I don't see it coming, then I’m still vulnerable.”

Loki stands and walks toward her. “Give me your hand.”

Jane hesitates. Loki sees it, and something uneasy passes through his expression.

“I’m not going to harm you.”

Jane nods and holds out her scalded hand. Loki takes it and runs his fingers down her wrist and across her palm. Green light swirls around his fingers, and heals her skin instantaneously, warmth running all the way down to her bones.

And then the world fades away, so suddenly that Loki doesn’t have a chance to let her go.

It’s a universe she’s seen before.

They’re back in the ceremonial hall of the Aesir with another Jane and another Loki standing at the top of the room, amid their wedding guests. The bride and groom are holding each other’s hands tightly, Frigga looping a sash around their wrists.

Loki drops Jane’s hand abruptly, neither of them missing the awkward symmetry of the moment.

The Other Jane and Other Loki smile fondly at each other as Frigga ties a knot with the ends of the sash, binding their hands.

“Great,” Jane says, tiredly. “Endless possible universes and we’re getting repeats.”  
  
Loki isn’t listening, scanning the room carefully.  
  
“You know, I don’t think--”  
  
Someone screams, close by. A scream so raw and terrified Jane’s heart stutters in her chest. She spins around to see a swell of dark ash fluttering to the ground, then another. People start to run, and she can see it now. It’s not just random clusters of ash. People are disintegrating. Asgardians are turning to ash, all through the room, every other one. Crumbling on their feet. A soldier in front of her takes a few steps, and his legs collapse under him, the burst of ash running straight through her.  
  
Jane stumbles back, horrified. She looks up at the front of the room. Her doppelganger, the Other Jane is on her knees, clinging to the Other Loki as he comes apart in her arms, until there’s nothing left. Her beautiful dress is covered in ash, and she bends forward, body wracked with sobs.

Instinctively, Jane lurches toward her, but Loki grabs her shoulder.  
  
“There’s nothing you can do. We’re not here.”  
  
Jane knows he’s right. She takes a step back, tears welling up in her eyes.

They stand there together in the middle of the chaos, waiting for the screaming to stop, waiting for the ash to settle, waiting for the power inside her to end the nightmare and bring them home.

//

Their lonely, quiet hotel room is a relief when it finally reappears. Jane sits down on one of the beds, her knees shaking and her breathing quick.

“What was that? What just happened?”

Loki shakes his head, eyes wide. “I don’t know, I…”

He doesn’t finish. He turns and opens the door, vanishing outside.

Jane’s not hungry anymore, a hollow, heavy feeling sitting in her stomach. She takes her notebook and pen from her hoodie and lies down on the bed and closes her eyes, trying to block out the memories of what she just saw.

Eventually, fatigue takes care of it for her, and she drifts into a dreamless sleep.

//

The room is dark when she wakes again, and she can just make out the silhouette of Loki on the bed opposite her. He’s facing away from her, but she can tell from his posture that he’s not asleep. The memories of what she saw in Asgard rise vividly from the back of her mind. Even though the ash never touched her, she feels like she can remember the sensation of it on her skin; like she can remember the smell of it.

“What we saw in that universe,” Jane says. “It was the end of the world. It’s what’s coming if Thanos wins.”

Loki turns over, to face her.

“It could be.”

“Are you scared?”

She can see Loki’s eyes, bright in the half-light.

“I’ve died before.”

It’s a non-answer. Another typical deflection. But it gives her pause. Jane hugs her knees against her chest.

“What does it feel like? Dying?”

“It’s nothing,” Loki says. “It’s just letting go.”

A hollow feeling creeps over her skin like a cold sweat. Jane tries to imagine it, what it would feel like to know that you’re dying. To know that everything you are, everything you know, everything you’ve ever felt, will be gone in an instant. That the universe is erasing you, like someone erasing an old flash drive.

Death itself is easy, but the _nothing_ , the letting go terrifies her.

“When the aether was still in me,” Jane says, slowly. “Towards the end, when it was killing me, I didn’t _feel_ anything. Not sadness, not happiness. Not even a sense of peace. Nothing.”

Loki shifts forward slightly, watching her with interest.

“It was protecting you in more ways than one.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Jane nods, and then lowers her voice slightly. “But I felt kind of angry about it, afterwards. Not that it was going to take my life, but that it was going to take my death, too. That I almost died, and I wasn’t going to have any say in it.”

Loki gives her a puzzled look.

“No one has any say in it.”

“But they _do,"_ Jane insists. "Not the dying part obviously, you can’t choose that. You can’t stop it. But those last crucial moments, you know? I wasn’t going to have a chance to accept it, or to fight it, or to say goodbye. It was going to take that away from me.”

“You’re talking about controlling something that isn’t able to be controlled,” Loki says, dismissively.

A car pulls past nearby, and the headlights flicker across the white walls of the hotel room.

“Really?” Jane asks. She tucks her hand under her pillow. “On the ship, when the Hulk attacked Thanos. You had a chance to run. Why didn’t you run?”

Loki stares at her for a moment, and then averts his gaze.

“I wasn’t thinking.”

It’s such an obvious and blatant lie that it’s almost laughable, but Jane doesn’t feel like laughing. A soft sadness tugs at her chest. Even now, even when she’s the only one who can possibly hear him, he won’t say it.

“Loki--”

“Go back to sleep,” Loki interrupts. “We’ll find Strange in the morning if we can.”

Jane gets under the blanket, curling into the folds of stiff material, and turns away from him.

“Goodnight.”

She hears Loki shift in bed behind her, and mumble something in response.

Jane’s drifting off to sleep again, almost, when she feels the earth start to spin. Her eyes fly open, and she kicks off the blankets. She reaches toward Loki on the bed beside her, grasping his shoulder tightly, before the darkness fades and shudders into bright light.

The sun is setting on a balcony, in a world she doesn’t recognise. It’s not Asgard, and it’s not Earth, but it’s as beautiful as any place she’s seen on either of them.

Another Loki with longer, wilder hair, is sitting on the stone railing with his legs dangling over the edge, a city glinting pink and gold beneath him. Jane looks questioningly behind her, back at the Loki she knows. His eyes are still tired and squinting with sleep.

“Alfheim,” he says quietly, and Jane nods. She remembers now. Home of the light elves, and the dark ones too, somewhere deep below them.

Another Sif appears at the doorway to the balcony. She’s not wearing her armour, just a plain, blue dress.

“Have you decided?”

The Other Loki turns his head slightly and nods. Sif shifts on her feet.

“You’re going back, aren’t you?”

“I have to.”

Sif shakes her head.

“It’s suicide. She’ll kill you.”

The Other Loki nods, his eyes are distant.

“Sif, if I don’t try she’ll kill us all.”

Jane looks back at Loki again, confused.

“Who are they talking about?”

Loki shrugs. “Hela, perhaps?”

That would make some sense, she supposes. Though she doesn’t understand why this Loki would be going after her on his own, especially without Thor. Jane turns back to the Other Loki and Sif again. Sif is closer to Loki now, right behind him, and she reaches out and grips his shoulder.

A small, melancholy smile curls the corners of the Other Loki lips, and he puts his hand over Sif’s, briefly squeezing it.

“You will watch over the others while I am gone?”

Sif’s wipes a stray tear from her cheek.

“Yes, of course. They are healing well. Eir says that they should wake soon.”

“Good.”

Sif steps away from the Other Loki again.

“I’ll see you when you get back.” She disappears quickly back through the balcony doorway.

The Other Loki sits there for a moment longer, before he gets to his feet. As he turns slightly, teetering on the edge of the stone railing, Jane catches sight of something in his other hand, which he’d been holding, but that had been hidden from view by his body until now. Jane’s eyes widen in disbelief, and she hears Loki take a sharp breath suddenly, somewhere behind her, and knows he’s seen it too.

It’s Mjolnir.

The Other Loki takes a step forward over the edge of the balcony, and then he’s gone.

And so are they.

When Jane can see again, they’re still with him. They’ve been pulled somehow, along with the Other Loki and are standing on a rugged field of green grass. The ocean, murky and endless, roars against the bottom of a sheer cliff behind them.

The Other Loki doesn’t move. He seems to be waiting for something. Jane looks at Loki, but he’s not looking at her, distracted still, _stunned_ by the sight of Mjolnir in the firm hold of the Loki from this universe.

Jane feels a sudden shock of cold air, and then a blast of red light strikes the ground in front of them. A figure emerges from the light, with dark, luminescent eyes, and a face she knows.

Another Jane smiles at the Other Loki, in a cold, empty way that makes the hair stand up on Jane’s skin.

“You came back,” she says. “Why?”

“I missed your warm and convivial disposition, naturally.”

Jane starts, disturbed by the familiar response. She glances at Loki, and this time his eyes meet hers.

“You shouldn’t have come,” The Other Jane says. “I warned you last time that I wouldn’t be as nice if you came back.”

The Other Loki’s eyes turn cold.

“It was _nice_ , what you did to Frigga and Thor?”

She tilts her head.

“They’re alive, aren’t they?”

“Barely.”

Jane’s heart is pounding in her chest. She did it. She hurt Thor and Frigga. She was the one Sif and Loki were talking about with such fear. She stares, in shock, at the dark, red light in her double’s eyes. What happened? What did it do to her?

The Other Jane takes a few steps toward the Other Loki, her expression full of defiance.

“I didn’t want to do _any_ _of it_ , but they were trying to take my power away.”

The Other Loki’s demeanour changes suddenly, all the anger dropping away. There’s something new and desperately sad in his expression.

“Jane, no one is trying to take your power away, we’re trying to help. The aether in you is too strong; it has taken over.”

The Other Jane shakes her head, angrily.

“No, it’s made me better. I can see things clearly now. I can save this world from itself.”

“By killing anyone who doesn’t do as you say?”

The Other Jane fixes him with a hard look. “Whatever it takes.”

“Jane, please—”

“You could join me, you know." She steps into him and touches the sides of his face. "We could rule Earth together. Isn’t that what you always wanted, to be a King?”

The Other Loki shakes his head. His voice is thin.

“Not like this.”

The Other Jane drops her hands, and then one of them twitches slightly. A burst of red light hits Mjolnir and turns it into ribbons of grey, fluttering out of the Other Loki’s hand.

“You said you loved me once,” she growls. “Another lie. You all _lie_ so much.”

The Other Loki moves forward and grasps her hands in his.

“It wasn’t a lie,” he says. “But it wasn’t for you.”

She shakes her head, confused.

“What?”

“I loved a woman I met in New Mexico, and I’d rather like her back.”

He leans in and kisses her on the mouth, deeply; passionately, bringing his hands up to cup the sides of her face. Jane can feel her skin flushing with heat at the sight of it, but she can’t bring herself to look away. He breaks the kiss suddenly. The Other Jane’s eyes have changed to a soft, clear brown. The darkness is gone, and they’re clear and fearful. The Other Loki sees it too and pulls her tightly into his arms.

“Jane, stay with me.”

When she speaks her voice is so soft Jane barely hears it.

“Run.”

“Fight it, Jane. Come back.”

She touches the side of his face tenderly, and the Other Loki stills.

“I love you. _Run_.”

Her eyes roll back in her head suddenly. They shift back into a shadowy amber. The Other Loki stumbles backwards as the Other Jane’s face turns ugly with rage. Jane takes an instinctive step closer to both of them, her heart thudding relentlessly in her chest, wanting desperately to ward off whatever comes next.

“You tried to trick me.”

He doesn’t say anything. There’s a sudden resignation in his face that turns Jane’s blood cold.

The Other Jane snarls and swipes her hand at him, red light bursting from her and hitting the Other Loki in the chest. It sends him soaring backward through the air like a rag doll and plummeting over the edge of the overhang. Jane is frozen for a moment, staring transfixed in horror, at the clear sky where the Other Loki briefly was before he fell.

Unthinkingly, she runs after him.

She hears Loki shout her name, but she can’t stop running, possessed, her feet pounding hard and fast into the ground, her legs burning. Jane runs all the way to the edge of the cliff and doesn’t stop, running until her feet hit air.

Her body hits the freezing water hard, and the shock of it closes her lungs momentarily as she sinks below the murky, thrashing waves. Jane claws her way up, and takes a few deep breaths, before diving back under.

It’s hard to see anything in the half-light of the dusky sea water, but eventually, miraculously, she sees him. A blurry shadow, glinting gold and green, a few dozen feet away. Jane swims toward him, holding her breath; her chest burning and her head throbbing with the effort of it.

When she reaches him, he’s sinking; his body limp. Jane reaches out to grasp his arm, frantically trying to pull him up, and his eyes fly open suddenly. The Other Loki seems to look right at her, and his features soften unmistakably. Jane breathes in. 

The water burns her lungs. A red mist gathers behind her eyes.

Then something else. Grey bed-sheets are clenched in her hand. Jane looks up, her breathing ragged and uneven, and realises she’s back in the hotel room. She’s curled up on the edge of Loki’s bed. He’s sitting up next to her.

“Are you alright?”

Jane nods slowly, getting out of his bed and sitting back down on her own. The cheap foam sags underneath her.

Loki’s watching her carefully.

“So, do you usually throw yourself off cliffs for people you don’t consider friends, or was it just because this one was worthy?”

She doesn’t miss the scathing tone; the inexplicable anger just beneath the surface.

Jane ignores it. She’s too tired to let him pick a fight with her now, and she can’t explain how it felt. To watch a version of herself trying to take someone’s life. How she’d run because she couldn’t stop herself, because she was so desperate to take it back.

“He saw me,” she says finally. “In the water. He opened his eyes, and he looked right at me.”

Loki shoots her an uneasy glance.

“That isn’t possible. It’s a parallel universe Foster, none of them can see you.”

“But I saw-- He _recognised_ me.”

“You were in shock. You must have imagined it.”

He could be right, she supposes. Maybe she’d just seen what she’d wanted to see. Maybe she’d died when she hit the water and nothing that came after was real.

Jane picks up her notebook and pen and starts writing it all down. It had felt real. The freezing water stinging her eyes and her lungs. The way the Other Loki had looked at her, with something more, something _deeper_ , than recognition. He’d looked at her with love, and for a fleeting, terrifying moment, she’d understood him.

Later, when Jane drifts back into sleep, she dreams of a universe with vast green meadows, suffused with a warm, golden light. They’re all there, the Asgardians, waiting for her.

//

The sound of rain rouses Jane from sleep in the early morning. There is dim light creeping through the hotel curtains. Her stomach rumbles with hunger, so she gets up and grabs a biscuit from the tea stand and turns the kettle on. She feels strangely jet-lagged, and her eyes sting like she hasn't slept a wink. Like all the dark visions she's had of other lives are starting to bruise her from the inside out.

Jane hears the next universe before she sees it. The unmistakable sound of a baby crying. Jane drops her mug and doesn’t see it hit the ground.

She’s back in her apartment suddenly. Another version of herself is pacing the room, rocking a screaming baby in her arms.

Jane shakes her head slightly with disbelief. 

The Other Jane looks just as distressed as the baby is. Her eyes are red like she’s been crying, and her hair is unbrushed, sticking up on one side. There’s a patch of something that looks disturbingly like baby vomit on the sleeve of her flannel shirt. It would be kind of funny, Jane thinks, if it wasn’t so strange.

A flash of green light fills the room, and suddenly another Loki is there, daggers brandished in both his hands. The Other Jane’s body seems to sag with relief when she sees him.

“What is it?” Loki asks, scanning the room. “What’s wrong?”

“He won’t _stop_ _crying_ ,” The Other Jane says, her voice wobbling.

Loki stares at her, and then at the howling bundle in her arms. The daggers disappear, and he sighs, audibly.

“Foster, please tell me you didn’t send out a distress signal over an infant.”

“I didn’t know what else to do! He’s been like this for _two hours_.” The Other Jane looks down at the baby for a moment. “I think he hates me.”

“Not without reason, I don’t doubt.”

The Other Jane doesn’t say anything, but her bottom lip quivers a little. Loki sighs again and walks toward her.

“Alright, calm down. Where did you get it?”

“Get what?”

“The infant.”

“Oh, he’s Darcy’s. Darcy and Ian’s. I said I’d look after him while they went out for their anniversary, but I forgot I don’t know anything about babies.” She looks up at Loki. “Will you try holding him, just for a minute?”

“Absolutely not.”

“But—"

“Listen, if you want him to be quiet this should be quite simple.” Loki waves his hand, and the room falls into silence, suddenly. The Other Jane glances down at the baby; his little face is still scrunched up and bright red.

“Did you just… turn him off?”

“Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“Yes. I mean, no. Loki, he’s still upset!" The Other Jane says. "He’s still crying, you’ve just made it so we can’t hear him!”

“Tell me what you want, Foster.”

“I want him to stop crying normally. No magic, okay?”

Loki nods and flicks his hand. The baby’s cries fill the room again.

A sudden, deafening crash shakes the whole apartment and makes both the Other Jane and Loki flinch. Jane steps backward, shocked, as a large creature, seemingly a man formed from rock, comes barreling into the room.

“Dear god,” Loki breathes.

“I got your signal,” The rock creature says. “Who’s in distress?”

“No one is in distress, Korg. There’s just a very small, very emotionally vulnerable human fretting a little.” Loki smirks at the Other Jane. “And this infant.”

The Other Jane flips him off.

“Oh, hello Jane,” Korg says, spotting the bundle in Jane’s arms. “You have a baby!”

Loki sits on the sofa and crosses his legs.

“Everything's under control Korg, you can leave.”

“No!” the Other Jane says, a little desperately. “Don't leave. Can you just, hold him for a little bit?”

Korg nods. The Other Jane places the baby gently, carefully in his large arms.

“Hello, little man,” Korg coos, and then nods at the Other Jane. “He looks just like his mum.”

“No, no, he's not mine.”

“Oh sorry,” Korg glances at Loki. “He looks a bit like his dad then I guess? If you squint a bit.”

Loki furrows his brow at him.

“What are you talking about?”

“He's not Loki’s either,” she explains. “I'm babysitting for a friend.”

Jane watches as Korg shoots the Other Jane a strange, indecipherable look and then turns away and rocks the baby in his arms. Slowly, eventually, the crying begins to peter out and the room settles into a calm silence.

The Other Jane collapses onto the sofa next to Loki. She yelps as Loki grabs her around the waist and pulls her onto his lap.

“Hello, Foster. Have you missed me?”

She snakes her arm around his neck and leans in and presses a quick kiss to his lips. “No.”

Another loud crash shudders the ground underneath them, and everyone startles. The baby starts to cry again. Fandral, Hogun and Volstagg run into the living room, one right after the other. They all brandish their weapons and look around the room searchingly.

“We got your signal,” Hogun says.

“What has happened?” Volstagg asks.

“Who’s in distress?” Fandral continues.

Loki sighs. “No one is in distress—"

“Why would humans sit on babies?” Korg interjects, visibly confused. “They can’t even use their little legs yet to kick you away.”

Loki stares at him. The Other Jane laughs.

Jane laughs with her before the universe blinks out.

She’s back in the hotel room. Shards of broken mug at her feet.

“Loki,” Jane starts. “You should have seen—"

Loki makes a low noise from his bed, and Jane turns around. He’s still asleep but his face is creased with tension, and his breathing is rapid.

“Loki?” Jane asks, quietly. He doesn’t wake; he just makes another soft, frightened sound.

“You will never...,” he breathes, raggedly, “... _a god_.”

Jane freezes, realising what he’s dreaming about. It gets worse as Loki suddenly lets out an audible whimper.

“P _lease, Thor_. Please. _Brother help_ \--”

Jane can’t stand it anymore. She rushes across the room to him and shakes his shoulder, hard. Loki’s eyes are suddenly wide open, wild and filled with fear. His hand flies out and grabs Jane violently by her neck. His grip is so tight it stops her breath, and her vision blurs and starts to haze crimson.

Jane reaches out blindly, tugging desperately at his arm, and abruptly he releases her. She falls backward, knocking against the side of her bed, breathing hard.

Loki moves to sit up, and Jane shrinks away involuntarily.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

Jane looks up at him. He looks wretched. Skin ashen, and eyes wet and glassy, the last remnants of his nightmare still clinging to him.

“It’s okay, it’s fine. It’s really- it's fine.” Jane says, hoping if she says it enough they’ll both believe it.

//

Jane showers and gets back into the same clothes. She ties her hair up in a loose bun and pulls her hoodie up as high as it’ll go, but it doesn’t cover the bruises starting to fade on her neck.

“Bleecker Street,” Loki says when she comes out of the bathroom. He catches sight of her and stops. “Your--”

“It doesn’t matter,” she says, waving her hand dismissively. “What were you saying about Bleecker street?”

“It’s where Strange is located. Or was. I cast a spell while you were occupied.” His eyes are still lingering on her neck.

Jane picks up her cell and punches Bleecker street into google maps.

“Greenwich Village,” she sighs. “Of course it is. Do you have a street number?”

“No, just a general vicinity. But I should be able to find it once we’re there, presuming there’s some sort of concealment spell on the residence.”

“Okay,” Jane says, nodding. Something hopeful flickering inside her for the first time since they set out yesterday. “Let’s go, then.”

//

It’s still early, and the 50 is relatively quiet, so they make good time.

It’s been raining almost constantly since they left, and the sky is grey and moody, the odd rainbow arching its way across the horizon. Jane leaves her window open a little, the fresh air and occasional drops of water cooling the skin on her face, keeping her focused. Keeping her mind on the present; on what they have to do next.

Jane’s alert enough that she feels the next universe shift, sometime before it happens. Jane automatically pulls onto the side of the road and flicks her hazards on. She doesn’t need to say anything this time. Loki looks at her, and his fingers close around hers.

They’re on a ship. Engines whirr and rusted metal creaks underneath them. Jane is face to face with another version of herself, sitting at a metal bench, crouched over a pile of paperwork.

Another woman she doesn’t recognise, in warpaint and blue and grey armour, slings an arm around the Other Jane’s shoulder, and kisses the side of her head. The Other Jane sighs and gently pushes her away, her attention still on the papers scattered out in front of her.  
  
“Who’s that?” Jane asks.

There’s a faint smile on Loki’s lips.  
  
“Most just call her Valkyrie. Or Scrapper 142, but that’s somewhat contingent on the planet you’re on.”

“Wait, seriously? She’s a Valkyrie?” Jane gapes at her. “I didn’t think they were real.”

Loki gives her sidelong glance, seemingly amused by her awed reaction.

“She’s the last.”  
  
“Wow, she’s-- she’s really beautiful.”  
  
“She has a certain charm,” Loki agrees. “But she’s a drunk, and she fights dirty.”  
  
Jane glances up at him. “She knocked you on your ass?”  
  
“That’s not exactly how I’d describe it.”  
  
Jane laughs. She watches Valkyrie as she leans over the Other Jane to pick up her glass of wine, downing it all in one go. “Is she still alive in our—back at home?”  
  
“I don’t know. But she’s survived worse than Thanos, so I wouldn’t bet against her.”

Jane looks up at him, a faint understanding dawning on her.

“You like her.”

Loki glances at her.

“I understand her. It’s not the same thing.”  
  
There is a sudden barrage of footsteps on grated stairways, and another Loki, another Thor and another Bruce Banner all come into the room, one after the other. The Other Jane looks up.  
  
“Did you set it?” she asks.  
  
“We’re on course,” Banner says. “We should reach Nidavellir about two days from now, I think.”

The Other Jane looks disappointed.

“You can’t get us there any sooner?”  
  
“Not on this death trap,” The Other Loki’s voice is scornful. “Valkyrie stole the most decrepit ship in the universe.”  
  
“If you hadn’t offended the _entire_ Neesham race on the way out, maybe I’d have had time to find a better one,” Valkyrie snaps.  
  
“Enough,” Thor interjects. “This is not the time for your petty squabbles. We must focus.”  
  
A tile falls from the roof and smashes on the table in front of the Other Jane, making her yelp. Thor frowns. Loki and Valkyrie both break into helpless snickering. Bruce coughs and hides his mouth with his hand.  
  
“This universe is ridiculous,” Loki says.  
  
Jane shakes her head, grinning. “No, I like this one.”  
  
The Other Jane leans over the table, pulling her paperwork out from underneath pieces of broken tile. She’s calm, in control and Jane feels a pang of something strange, a wistfulness. Like missing a home that never existed in the first place.  
  
Suddenly the Other Jane lifts her head. She looks at right her, and her eyes widen with surprise.  
  
“What _the hell_?”  
  
Jane takes a step back, and the world blinks out. She’s back on the side of the road. A truck rushes past, making the car shudder underneath them.  
  
“You saw it that time.” Jane turns to face Loki. “You saw it, right? She spoke to me. She looked _right at me_.”  
  
“I saw.” Loki releases her hand.

Jane reaches for the ignition, but her hand stops, frozen in mid-air. Realisation pools coldly in Jane’s stomach.  
  
“The walls between universes are getting weaker.”  
  
Loki clears his throat.

“They are.”

Jane doesn’t want to ask, but she does anyway.  
  
“And what happens if they break down completely?”  
**  
** “For you?” Loki’s eyes meet hers. “It will seem like almost nothing.”

Jane thinks of the convergence in Greenwich. It seems so small now, so wieldy in comparison to the convergence she’s faced with. A convergence only she can navigate.  
  
“I won’t be able--” Jane’s voice catches slightly. She licks her lips and tries again. “I won’t know what’s home and what isn’t. It’ll all look the same.”

Loki looks slightly lost all of a sudden, and the sight of him uncurls something cold and terrifying inside her.  
  
“It’s not over yet. Your Avengers could still win. If Tony Stark is up there as you say, and still alive, we can presume he’s fighting.”  
  
Jane turns the key in the ignition.

“No.” She shakes her head. “That’s not enough.”

The drive seems so much longer after that. Jane knows their time is running out, and the road seems to unwind in front of them and go on endlessly, even as the world rushes by in a blur. It doesn’t help that Loki is so quiet and still either. Jane finds herself wishing for a few of the barbs and jokes of yesterday, anything to fill the empty silence.

Anything to make it all seem less helpless.

“Why do you think I’m not seeing other things?”

Loki lifts his head at the sudden sound of her voice.

“I’m sorry?”

“In the parallel universes,” Jane explains, glancing at him and then looking back at the road. “We’re talking about endless possible universes, right? Infinite choices. Lives where I shouldn’t even exist. But all the worlds I’ve seen, aside from that first one of Thor and Sif, I’m always there. Or you are, or both of us are. It doesn’t make sense, statistically speaking.”

“True.”

“Why do you think that is?”

Loki is quiet for a moment, Jane can feel his eyes on her.

“I'd only be speculating.”

“Okay so, speculate then.”

Loki tilts his head back against the top of the car seat.

“Well, whatever aether remains in you. Whatever power is causing you to see these things through the ever-widening gaps in the walls between universes. I think it's confused. What you're seeing is unprecedented, and your abilities, they are presumably, constantly trying to correct the situation on your behalf.”

Jane nods.

“Sure, that's why they keep fading in and out. It’s why I only see pieces of them.”

“Yes, but more than that,” Loki says, slowly. “It's not that these universes are all the same. As you say, the possibilities are endless, and there are comparatively, likely very few where we interact in the overall scheme of things. But the ones you're seeing are similar, almost echoes of each other, because—"

“Because they're the ones closest to my current physical state,” Jane says, realisation dawning on her. “It’s like a computer algorithm. It's picking up the universes it thinks are the same. The things it thinks I’m already seeing.”

“Exactly. As strange as it sounds, I think your power is trying to help you maintain a linear narrative, but the result is effectively gibberish. A chaotic mess of universes that look or feel a little like this one.”

Jane feels oddly comforted by the idea that in the midst of everything, her power might actually be trying to protect her. As much, and for as long as it can.

“As speculating goes, that's actually not bad.”

She glances back at Loki, and he shrugs slightly.

“Well, it's less terrifying than the alternative.”

“That there are a bunch of universes where you’re kind of into PDA?”

Jane doesn’t need to turn around to see the unimpressed look he’s giving her, she can imagine it just fine.

“No, that there might be more than one world where you’re the most powerful being in the universe.”

“Yeah, well don’t worry, I’m pretty sure that one was an anomaly. Remind me to tell you about the one that I saw while you were still asleep, with us and the screaming baby. If we get through this.”

Loki falls silent for a long moment. When he finally speaks his voice is strained.

“Surely that’s physiologically impossible.”

“No it--,” Jane bites back a smile. “It wasn’t _ours_.”

Loki’s sigh of relief is audible.

“For mercy’s sake Foster, why wouldn’t you lead with that?”

Jane laughs, despite herself, and then takes the next exit. When she finally glimpses the Manhattan skyline, she thinks maybe it’s never looked so much like home.

//

Bleecker street is still and eerily serene. Jane gets out of the car, and the ground seems to immediately tilt underneath her feet. A sickening, swaying feeling, like being on a boat in rough water. She clutches her stomach, sudden nausea rising inside her.

They must be in the right place. That’s something, she supposes.

Loki slams the car door shut, his eyes scanning the buildings around them. After a few minutes, he points at a rundown building a block ahead of them.

“There.”

Jane squints. “That’s supermarket.”

“No, it isn’t.”

He takes off, striding fast, and Jane is almost at a jog to keep up with him. It’s hard to move fast with the ground reeling and tilting underneath her; a feeling that only seems to grow in intensity the closer she gets to the building.

Loki doesn’t notice her struggling; his gaze is fixed on their goal.

When Jane finally catches up to him, he’s muttering some sort of incantation under his breath. There’s a flash, and then a portal opens up in front of them, sparking with yellow light. Loki disappears into it, and Jane takes a deep breath and heads in after him.

They step into a grand, spacious foyer. There’s a hole in the turreted, glass roof, leaking rain, and a large wooden staircase in front of them.

Someone clears their throat, and Jane and Loki both startle.

A short man, with a shaved head, is watching her warily. His hands are twitching impatiently by his side.

“Can I help you?”

“Oh, I’m--,” Jane stutters. “I’m sorry to intrude, Mr?”

“Wong.” He waves his hand dismissively. “Just Wong.”

Jane takes a step toward him, and the ground lurches again. She freezes where she is, trying to keep her equilibrium. Loki seems to notice this time, and he shoots her a puzzled look.

“Nice to meet you, Wong, I’m Jane Fost--”

“Tell him we need to speak to Strange,” Loki interrupts. Wong peers at him, and Jane’s heart misses a beat.

“Why don’t you just tell me yourself?”

Loki stares at him.

“You can see me?”

Wong seems to examine him for a moment.

“Is there some reason I shouldn’t?”

Jane feels the room sway again, shuddering under her feet. It’s the walls between universes. They’re coming apart. It’s happening faster than either of them bargained for.

She probably won’t get committed now, Jane thinks. Though it’s not much of a consolation, all things considered.

Wong’s gaze flicks between her and Loki.

“Who are you? Why are you here?”

“My name is Jane Foster, and this is my friend um, John.”

“Oh, we’re friends now, are we?” Loki’s voice is droll. “How the mighty have fallen.”

“Not now, _John_ ,” Jane snaps. She directs her attention back to Wong. “We need to speak to Strange immediately.”

“Doctor Strange is not here,” Wong gives Loki a sidelong glance. “And your friend _John_ looks a lot like an Asgardian criminal who destroyed half of this city a few years ago.”

Loki ignores the second half of his sentence.

“Where is Doctor Strange? When will he be back?”

Wong pauses. Something melancholy twitches through his expression.

“I cannot tell you. He is not currently on Earth.”

Jane remembers the footage of the spaceship over New York and something clicks into place. The other men, the ones she didn’t recognise. The ones that disappeared with him.

“He’s with Tony Stark, isn’t he?”

Wong looks at Jane with surprise, and his face softens a little.

“You’re a friend of Stark’s?”

“Not exactly, but we know some of the Avengers.” Jane glances at Loki. “We’re here so-- we’re trying to help.”

“I’m afraid you’ve come too late for that,” Wong says, and then hesitates. “I’m sorry.”

“But--”

The ground heaves sharply, and Jane loses her footing, stumbling to her knees. She reaches out for something to hold on to, but the floor is wet and slippery under her hands. Loki crouches down beside her.

“Foster?”

 Wong takes a few cautious steps in her direction, but Loki waves him back.

“Don’t touch her.”

“What is wrong with her?”

“I’m okay,” Jane insists. “I just--”

Everything sways violently, and Jane collapses against Loki, the world around her spinning and fading into nothingness.

//

When Jane opens her eyes, she knows right away something is wrong.

The universe is Asgard, but it’s only barely recognisable as the place she remembers. The golden towers aren't gold, but a grey, silvery hue, and fractured. Some buildings have crumbled completely, nothing but rubble remaining of them. All the gardens are bare, no greenery anywhere, just twisted, gnarled, empty branches reaching out to nothing.

Loki touches her arm lightly. Jane realises she’s still leaning against him. She pulled him into this universe with her by accident. She gets to her feet, and Loki follows. They’re in the middle of the Bifrost bridge, or what is left of it. There’s no colour in it. It’s like shattered glass. She can hear it creaking underneath them, and she shifts her feet nervously.

“I don’t like this,” Loki says, eyeing their surrounds. “We should leave.”

“We just have to wait it out,” Jane can feel it too. An uneasiness. This universe is different from the others somehow, and she doesn’t want to find out why. “We should shift back in a few minutes.”

“Or you could use your power.”

“I don’t know _how_ ,” Jane says, exasperated.

Loki grabs her shoulders suddenly.

“You just have to focus.” There’s a strange look in his eyes. “Foster, something isn’t right, I know you feel it too. Get us out of here.”

She doesn’t need any more convincing. Jane steps back out of his grasp and nods. “Okay. Okay, I’ll try. Give me your hand.”

Loki grasps her hand tightly, and she closes her eyes, focusing on the strength inside her. She feels something stir, and then a red light flickers to life behind her eyelids.

She’s distracted by the sudden sound of hooves on the bridge. Jane’s eyes fly open, and she can see them. Asgardians astride horses, racing toward them. Thor is leading them at the very front.

“They can see us.”

“Don’t,” Loki says. “Foster, focus.”

But it’s too late, they’re already there. The horses slow as they approach them. Thor slides off his horse, pointing his axe at them. Frigga, with Gugnir, and Sif with her sword, follow him. All of them pointing their weapons at them and watching them coldly, warily. Their obvious animosity makes Jane's stomach flip.

“Laufeyson,” Thor growls, looking at Loki with nothing short of pure and utter hatred. “You made a mistake coming here.”

Loki takes a step toward him, and they all raise their weapons higher.

“What did you just call me?”

“He’s not who you think--” Jane starts, but Thor isn’t listening. He launches himself at Loki, who moves swiftly and dodges the edge of his axe. He’s watching Thor, dumbfounded, and he doesn’t see Frigga. Her staff catches him in the jaw, sending him into the ground, hard.

“Hey, stop!” Jane says, rushing instinctively toward Loki. She’s close when Sif grabs her neck, and shoves her backwards, sending her slamming onto her back, knocking the air out of her lungs. Sif stands over her, the tip of her sword at Jane’s neck.

“Don’t move, traitor.”

“No, I’m--” Jane gasps. “You don’t understand--”

Something hard hits her in the face, and then there is nothing.

//

For a fleeting moment, when Jane wakes, she thinks she’s home again. She expects the horrible vision to be over, and to be back on earth somewhere in a Greenwich Village supermarket.

She’s not.

Jane’s on the floor of a large, white room. A shimmering, golden window at the front of it. She lifts her head, and pain wrenches through the front of her skull, making her whimper and curl onto her side.

Loki is sitting across from her, on the other side of the room. His head is tilted back, against the wall. Jane can see a deep, fresh wound in his cheek, and bruises, all over his face and neck. Jane feels sick at the sight of it.

 _Oh god,_ she thinks. _Did Thor do that to him? Did Frigga?_

“What is going on?” Jane asks, quietly. “Why are they like this?”

Loki laughs. An awful, bitter noise. “They think I’m a King.”

“What?”

“King Laufeyson, ruler of Jotunheim, slayer of the Allfather, and…” Loki pauses like he’s struggling to find the right words. “Destroyer of Midgard.”

Jane hears him, but it doesn’t don’t sink in. Not right away.

“That--” She sits up, flinching at the pain in her head. “No.”

Loki gives her a raw look, and she realises he’s telling the truth.

“Earth can’t be gone. It can’t. The Avengers would have--” Jane stops, realising how naive she sounds. This is a completely different universe. She can’t say what would or could happen. All bets are off.

Loki leans his head back against the wall again.

“I _told you_ to get us out of here.”

“We can still leave,” Jane insists, restrained panic nudging at her insides. This will all go away, eventually.”

Loki laughs again, and she hates the cold sound of it.

“The walls between universes have collapsed, we’re not going anywhere.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do. And so do _you_.”

She’d felt it when they landed here. They both had, they just hadn’t realised what it was until it was too late.

“Okay fine, I’ll just-- I’ll--.”

“You can’t transport us,” Loki interrupts. “The Aesir favour brawn over brains in battle, but they know how to contain prisoners, even the most powerful ones.”

Jane glances toward the other end of the room. It’s not a window, she realises. It’s a containment field. They’re trapped. They’re trapped in this universe and _this cell_.

A white-hot, blinding surge of frustration overwhelms her. Jane gets to her feet, and grabs the nearest thing she can reach, a small stone goblet, and hurls it as hard as she can at the containment field. It bounces back, without so much as a flicker in the shimmering, gold patterns that mark the field.

“I should have said,” Loki’s voice is tired, “goblets won’t get us out of here either.”

“Fuck _you_ ,” Jane snaps. She walks toward the containment field and peers through it, trying to see if there’s anyone nearby she can talk to. Someone she can explain this whole situation to. Someone who’ll _believe her_.

“They’ll have to realise, eventually. That you’re not him. This Laufeyson guy. Then they’ll let us go, right?”

“Possibly,” Loki says, unconvincingly. “If they don’t believe it’s some sort of trick.”

Her anger seems to rush out of her suddenly, only to be replaced by deep, crushing helplessness.

Jane blinks back tears and walks back over to Loki, sitting down next to him.

“Loki, I know you’re upset,” she hesitates, “I know they hurt you. But could you please, _please_ say something reassuring right now?”

Loki turns his head toward her. “What would you have me say?”

“I don’t know. Something like,” Jane lowers her voice and attempts an Asgardian accent. “‘It’ll be alright, Foster. Everything is going to be fine. I’m sorry about all the sarcasm, it’s a defence mechanism?’”

Loki’s lips curl into a small smile.

“It’ll be alright, Foster,” he repeats. He lightly touches the side of her face, and green light spreads out and over her skin, lessening the ache in her head. “Everything is going to be fine.”

Jane grabs his hand before he takes it away.

“You forgot the last bit.”

“Yes, well my indulgences have limits. Can I have my hand back?”

She lets him go and then leans back against the wall herself. They sit there in silence for a long time. Waiting for a saviour. Waiting for a miracle.

Waiting for anything at all.

//

Time speeds up, and slows down into moments.

//

They took her to see her mother, just once when she was eight. It was a grey stone building, surrounded by gardens. Her mother was wearing a blue dress with flowers on it, and when she’d seen Jane, she’d smiled and asked her name. When they’d gone inside for tea, she’d asked Jane her name again. The walls were a clean, bright white.

Just like the inside of a cell.

 _Jane_ , she’d told her mother. Over, and over again.

//

They can’t use magic to get them out, or anything in, but they can use it inside the cell.

Jane learns how to control her power a little, levitating and spinning their meagre items around the room, blurring everything around them, so that briefly she can’t see anything else. So that for a moment she can pretend she’s home.

//

Food sometimes appears, out of nowhere. No one brings it; they never see anyone, it just appears in the corner of their cell. It’s a reminder that people still know they’re there, if nothing else.

//

The lights never dim. They never go out. She never knows whether it’s night or day, so Jane sleeps erratically, and often. There are no beds, just a couple of white blankets inside a white cell, and they lie wherever they find themselves.

She lies near him more often than not. The soft sound of Loki’s breathing, in and out, eases the tightness in her chest and the buzzing in her head.

Jane’s glad she’s not alone. For the first time, she’s glad he’s here with her.

The food appears every day, she thinks, so she counts them that way. Five days pass, then ten, then fifteen.

//

Before New Mexico, years before Thor, when Jane was just like every other student working their ass off at the college library, she’d sometimes thought the stillness, the repetition of it all would drive her mad. There were days where she’d walk through the rows of books, and the sight of the white, clean wall at the end of them would make her want to run and throw her entire body at it.

Other times, she would step into a crowded lift, and the silence was so stifling she wanted to scream until her throat hurt. She never did anything like it, of course, they were just strange thoughts, probably brought on by the stress, or by lack of sleep. But she wondered anyway, whether one day they wouldn’t just be odd little impulses. Maybe one day she’d snap and run straight at that wall.

Maybe if she gathered up enough speed, she’d go all the way through.

//

Jane starts reciting lyrics to songs from home, to keep her mind busy. Any song she can think of. She doesn’t sing them; she just speaks the words to fill the endless, suffocating silence. When she can’t remember a line, she’ll repeat the verse over and over until it comes to her. Or until she makes something up that fits.

If Loki is bothered by it, he doesn’t show it. He watches, or he paces. She repeats Bohemian Rhapsody so many times it gives her a headache.

_Any way the wind blows. Anyway, the wind blows. Anyway_

_//_

A month passes, and Jane can feel her skin itching, her thoughts starting to unravel. The walls feel like they’re closing in.

Some days pass by fast, others crawl. The slower ones make them strange.

Jane runs into the containment field, burning a line down her face.

Loki floods the basin until they’re ankle deep in water.

//

“How did you survive it? How did you survive and he didn’t.”  
  
“I don’t know. I thought I was dying. I thought I had died, and then I woke up in your kitchen.”

Jane runs out of song lyrics and lies on the floor of the cell. She doesn’t move for a long time.

//

They bicker. They pick fights with each other over anything they can think of, their edges coming undone. He blames her for them being stuck in there. She tells him he should be grateful, in this universe he has everything he _ever wanted_.

For a moment his eyes get so dark she thinks he might kill her for it, and she can’t be sure that isn’t what she was aiming for.

//

Another month passes, and she stops waking up with the hope that she might be home. When Jane gives up, finally, her world gets small.

She shuffles over and lies her head on Loki’s stomach.

“Hello, Foster,” Loki says, his voice thick with sleep. “Is something wrong?”

“Do you think he made it to Valhalla?”

He doesn’t ask who she’s talking about. He knows.

“No, I don’t.”

“But he died in battle, didn’t he? He sacrificed himself, trying to help. That has to be worth _something_.”

“Not all warriors go to Valhalla.” Loki’s voice is soft, and the sound vibrates through his stomach, against her ear. “Some go to Folkvangr.”

“Folkvangr,” Jane repeats, and the word stirs a memory from the Norse Mythology texts she’d read so long ago when she’d first met Thor. From the Poetic Edda.

_The ninth is Folkvang, where Freyja decrees  
Who shall have seats in the hall;  
The half of the dead each day does she choose,  
And half does Othin have_

“The field of warriors,” Jane continues, remembering. “The ones that she chooses.”

Loki’s hand lightly, briefly touches the top of her head.

“If he’s not in Hel, then he’s there.”

//

Jane stops writing her notebook, and maps the stars on the walls of their cell. Drawing them with the blue pen tucked into the pocket of her hoodie. She scribbles them into the walls for days; until she runs out of ink, until every constellation is almost as she remembers it.

Loki casts an enchantment to make the blue ink turn into a luminescent silver, so that they seem to flicker with colour, even in the endless white.

//

Jane tells Loki about her first thesis, and how she was ridiculed and mocked for it. Loki tells her about Frigga teaching him to conjure illusions, and the week he used one to make Thor appear bald to everyone but himself. 

Their stories and their secrets slowly spill out, day after day, filling the cool air of their cell.

Another month or two passes.

She stops counting.

//

Loki teaches her how to fight without her powers. Jane can’t match his skills, not even close, but she can move fast and strike with some precision. After some weeks, or months maybe, she’s fighting Loki off for minutes at a time.

In the middle of one sparring session, Jane scratches Loki’s cheekbone with the end of a broken spoon. She yelps in surprise, but he just smiles at her in that weird, wild way she’s becoming accustomed to.

“Better,” he says. “Next time aim for the heart.”

Jane puts her hands on her hips, out of breath.

“You’re kind of nuts, you know that right?”

“What’s your point?”

“I don’t have one, I was just asking whether you knew.”

“Oh, I know,” Loki says, with a wicked grin, and grabs her wrist, twisting the spoon out of her grip and flipping her backward before she can stop him. Jane lands hard on her back, and Loki pins her to the floor, poking her in the chest with the spoon. “You’re dead now, by the way.”

Jane knocks it out of his hand.

“But I was so _young_ ,”

Loki claps his hand over her mouth.

“Shh, you’re dead. Go toward the light.”

His hand smothers her laughter. It’s the first time in such a long time that she’s really, honestly laughed, and it feels strange; like it’s not even coming from her.

Caught up in her momentary happiness, Jane reaches up to wipe the blood off Loki’s cheek. As she does, he stills. His smile catches on his face and falters. Jane tilts her hand just slightly and splays her fingers out, gently touching the side of his face.

Loki stares at her, wide-eyed for a moment, then abruptly gets to his feet.

Jane doesn’t think too much about what it means.

None of it matters in here, anyway.

//

“How did you survive it? How did you survive it and he didn’t?”  
  
“I don’t remember. I thought I was dying. I thought I had died, and then I woke up with you pointing a fork at me.”

“But there must have been _something._ ”

“If there was, it’s gone.”

//

Jane’s cell is still in her pocket, and she checks it every day, but it’s always the same. A white, blank screen. As bright and unrelenting as the room they’re caged in.

She runs at the containment field, but this time Loki stops her before she can hit it; materialising in front of her in a flash of green, putting his body in her way. She looks up, startled, and then starts to cry. He holds her while she sobs, and he says her name for the first time.

 _Jane_ , he says softly. Over, and over again.

//

Time speeds up, and slows down into moments. She stops trying to hold onto them, and lets them pass. Days blur into each other. She lets them. She lets all of it go. The only anchor is him, and each other.

It’s enough.

//

Jane is dozing, her head resting on a haphazard pile of blankets, when she hears a noise outside the cell. She lifts her head, and the shock of their first visitor makes her heart scatter in her chest.

It’s Loki.  
  
Not the Loki next to her that she knows. This Loki’s eyes glow red, and his bright blue skin is marked with scars.

 _Laufeyson_ , she realises. King of Jotunheim. The reason they’re here.

Jane sits up slowly, her limbs stiff with tension. She feels Loki shift beside her before he speaks.

“What do you want?”

“I have been hearing stories of a man with my face in the dungeons of Asgard,” Laufeyson is watching them intently. “I wished to see it for myself.”

Jane turns to look at Loki. His expression is one of perfect calm, as if this is nothing out of the ordinary, but Jane can feel the electricity in the air; hostility simmering just below the surface.

“Well, you’ve seen me. You should leave before the Aesir realise you’re visiting. You’re not very popular here I’m afraid.”  
  
“Who _are_ you?” Laufeyson asks.  
  
“I’d have thought that would be obvious,” Loki replies. “Or are you having trouble seeing through those charming red eyes of yours?”

“I see just fine,” Laufeyson stares coldly at him. “Answer the question.”

Loki stares back at him, unflinchingly. Jane reaches out and touches Loki’s forearm, fear thrumming through her, willing him not to say anything else.

Laufeyson notices and narrows his eyes at her. “I thought all the Midgardians were dead.”

“Well, I guess you missed one,” Loki sneers. “Don’t take it to heart, what’s one failure out of seven billion victories?”

Laufeyson’s expression turns suddenly ugly with anger, and something bright yellow lights up in the centre of his chest.

Jane yelps as she’s lifted into the air suddenly, invisible chains wrapping around her limbs and neck, her head pushed back so hard it hurts.

“Do not make the mistake of thinking that just because you are trapped in this cell, that I cannot reach you,” Laufeyson growls. “Now, are you going to tell me where you came from? Or shall we see how far I can bend her before she breaks?”

Jane tries to say something, but the invisible chains tighten around her throat, and she can’t breathe. She can hear shouting, but she can’t make out the words, and red light is starting to cloud her eyes.

Then, nothing.

//

Someone is calling her name in the darkness.  
  
_Foster._

 _Foster, wake up.  
_  
Jane’s eyes open, and she gasps for air.

She’s on the floor of the cell. The chains are gone. Loki is leaning over her, eyes searching her face.

“Are you alright?”

Jane sits up, her head spinning.

“I’m okay. He’s—He’s gone?”

“For now.”

Jane looks at him, her fingers lightly touching her neck. Shocks of pain still radiating through the skin and bones.

“He attacked me through the containment field like it was _nothing_. I couldn’t even use the aether properly, he was too strong.”

Loki’s expression is grim.

“He has some other source of power, in the chain around his neck. There’s no way a frost giant could be that powerful on its own. I underestimated who we were dealing with.”

Jane pauses.

“You told him everything, didn’t you?”

Loki glances at her neck.

“Yes.”

“ _Fuck._ ”

“He’ll be back, now that he knows the power you have,” Loki’s features are creased with something dark and unreadable. “He won’t stop until it’s his. Everyone on Asgard is in danger.”

Jane nods. She doesn’t ask him why he hated him so much. She doesn’t ask what it’s like to meet the worst version of yourself. She already knows.

“We have to warn Frigga somehow.”

“Warn her of what?” says a gruff voice. Jane flinches.

Thor is standing on the other side of the containment field, watching them curiously.

“Oh, _now_ you show up, you useless oaf,” Loki snarls. “Where were you five minutes ago when there was an intruder in the dungeons?”

“I saw no intruder. What is it you need to warn my mother of?” Thor repeats, insistent. Jane gets to her feet and walks toward the containment field.

“Thor, the Jotuns are coming. King Laufeyson was here, and he’ll be coming back with force. You have to let us out of here, or we can’t help you.”

“No, this is a trick,” Thor says, and points at Loki, as he walks toward them both. “That’s Laufeyson.”

Jane shakes her head.

“No, no he’s not. They’re not the same. We’re from a different universe. _Please_ , all of you are in danger.”

Thor’s eyes dart from her to Loki, and back again.

“It’s not possible to travel in the manner of which you are speaking.”

“It shouldn’t be.” Loki lightly touches the side of Jane’s face, in a tender way that takes her by surprise. “But she can.”

Thor sees the affection in it too. He fixes them with an inquisitive look.

Jane realises abruptly that’s why Loki is doing it. It’s _for show_. Entirely for Thor’s benefit. This universe’s Thor had only ever known a cruel and murderous version of the man in front of him; he’d never known him as a brother, he had seen no other side of him, and Loki was using that against him.

It’s genius in its simplicity, but even knowing it’s fake; even knowing the Thor in front of them isn’t the Thor she loved, Jane can’t bring herself to play along. Not now, after everything. Not anymore.

She settles for trying to look unbothered as Loki runs his thumb over her cheekbone, but her face flushes with heat, betraying her.

“Ask me a question, Thor,” Loki says. “Ask me something about Asgard. Something Laufeyson couldn’t possibly know.”

Thor hesitates, watching them both for a moment, and it’s in such a confused, conflicted way that Jane is sure she sees a glimpse of the Thor she knew from home. She jumps on it.

“We can protect you, but not from in here.”

“I will speak with my mother,” Thor says, and abruptly disappears.

Thor doesn’t come back that day or the day after.

Jane lets the flicker of hope burn out, and sleeps.

//

She dreams of home, but not the one in New York. She dreams of a cafe in Puente Antiguo, warm sunlight streaming through the windows. Thor with his coffee, and Darcy following him around with her phone. Erik watching them, a small, effortless grin curling his lips. A look she’d rarely seen since, in a place bleached yellow, like an old photograph.

The sound of footsteps on stone rouses her from her sleep.

Thor reappears, sweaty, on the other side of the containment field. There’s a large, bloody gash just below his neck. Jane is instantly wide awake, and springs to her feet.

“I hope you are who you say you are,” Thor says. There are tremors in his voice. “He’s here.”

The containment field disappears, and Thor inclines his head in the direction of a long hallway.

“This way.”

Then he’s gone again.

Jane pulls on her sneakers, her hands trembling with adrenaline and her mind racing. She starts to run after him, but Loki grabs her arm, jerking her to a stop.

“It’s time to go,” he hisses.

Jane blinks at him, not understanding.

“What are you talking about?”

“You saw how powerful Laufeyson was. None of us stand a chance against him. We need to leave, _now_.”

Jane shakes her head.

“No, we can’t. We have to help them.”

“For pity’s sake!” Loki shouts, not bothering to keep his voice down anymore. “There are thousands of millions of universes out there, Foster, some beyond repair. What difference does it make if this world burns?”  
  
“Do you even hear yourself speak?”  
  
“Listen--”  
  
“No, you listen,” Jane interjects, angrily. “This is-- It’s all that’s left here. It _matters_.”

She turns to leave, but Loki grabs her arm again, so violently it sends a jolt of pain up her arm. Jane growls and shoves him backwards, hard. He loses his footing and stumbles onto his ass.

“They left us here to rot,” he snarls at her, his face red. “You don’t owe them this. You can’t _save everyone_. Not here. Not from him.”

“Why are you—”

Jane catches a glimpse of dread in his eyes, and she recognises it. He thinks they’re going to die, all of them, but it’s not the dying that’s the nightmare, she realises. The nightmare is that he, this version of him, is going to be the one that does it.

It’s a dread Jane doesn’t just recognise, she _knows_ it. Her anger and confusion slip away instantly. Jane walks over to Loki, crouches down in front of him and presses a gentle kiss against his forehead. He doesn’t move.

“He won’t win,” she says quietly. Jane starts to get up, but Loki grasps her hand, softly this time. His fingers thread through hers and tug her back to face him.

“If we don’t go now,” he breathes, “Laufeyson could capture you. You could lose your power.”

Jane sighs. “If I leave them behind, then what’s the point of having it?”  
  
Loki drops her hand. His clothes shimmer and shift into armour, as he gets to his feet.

“Whatever comes next, Foster. It’s on _you_.”

He follows her out of the cells, anyway.

//

It doesn’t take them long to find the fight. Jane can hear the eruption of noise, feel the raw intensity of battle, almost as soon as they leave the dungeon. Jotuns are everywhere in Gladsheim; the Asgardians outnumbered but trying valiantly to force them back.

Jane scans the hall, and sees Laufeyson at the top of it, next to the throne. Something furious rushes through her at the sight of him there. She thinks of Earth, of everyone he killed, and she pitches toward him.

Laufeyson’s gaze finds hers, and he points a finger at her.

“Take her alive,” he shouts. “Kill the rest of them.”

Jane keeps running toward him, weaving her way through the chaos of fighting Aesir and Frost Giants. She glimpses Thor again, as he rushes past her. Loki is right behind him, all signs of anger and apprehension gone, focused on the brawl around him. He and Thor leave her behind, both moving extraordinarily fast; almost in tandem. Loki has conjured his knives and takes out two Frost Giants at once with swift, clean strokes of his weapons, forging a way forward.

Lightning cracks suddenly, and Jane slows her pace, looking up. Thor lifts his axe and launches himself into the air. As he does Laufeyson’s arm stretches out into a long, icy blade, and something on his chest lights up in a bright, vibrant yellow. Loki shouts at Thor to stop, but it’s too late. The axe is flung violently from Thor’s hands, he crashes down, defenceless, onto Laufeyson with sickening force, the blade running him through.

Frigga’s howl is deafening and wrenches through Jane’s whole body. She turns away from the sight of it, struggling to breathe, losing focus, until her despair gives way to overwhelming rage. Jane turns back again and lunges towards Laufeyson, the aether lighting up inside her and clouding her eyes with rose light. When she’s close enough, just a few feet away from him, she focuses it inside of her and then lets it go. A blinding wave of red explodes from her and knocks them all, everyone except Laufeyson, off their feet.

Jane readies herself to try and hit him a second time when someone grabs her by the hood of her sweatshirt. She ducks sideways, as hard and as fast as she can, and an axe misses her head, but it catches her on the edge of her shoulder. Jane grunts and falls onto her knees, feeling wet, hot blood draining from the open wound through her clothes and down her arm.

She turns to the Frost Giant behind her, kicking out hard, and blasting him with aether. His body spins through the air with the force of it. When she turns back around Laufeyson is in the fight and Loki is struggling with him, flashes of metal blinking in the light, their limbs moving so fast she can barely keep up.

Jane stumbles a few steps towards them, but her foot catches on something. She looks down to see Thor’s body at her feet. Eyes glassy and staring upward. Anguish rises up inside her, and Jane hurriedly crouches down next to him placing both her hands on his chest, willing the aether to burn up inside her, hoping for a miracle.

A cold shift in the air makes Jane look up. Laufeyson is standing over her, his arm still extended out into a long, blue blade.

“Step away from him. Now.”

“Fuck off,” Jane snaps, keeping her hands braced against Thor’s chest. She closes her eyes and tries desperately to concentrate. But she feels nothing.

There’s nothing, he’s--

Jane yelps as Laufeyson grabs a handful of her hair and drags her painfully, away from Thor, jerking her to her feet. Jane curses and spins around, hitting him in the face, and tearing the stone necklace from his neck, sending it clattering to the ground somewhere behind them.

Laufeyson jerks her head back, hard. Jane looks up at him and smiles, cold and razor sharp.

“You’re going to pay for that,” he growls and digs the blade into the wound in her shoulder. Jane screams, the searing pain making her vision turn briefly white.

There’s a flash of green light and a blur of something fast, and Laufeyson releases her. Loki swipes at Laufeyson’s face with one dagger, leaving a dark red mark across his cheek, and then catches him in the shoulder with the other. Laufeyson roars and charges at him, ducking another blow and then strikes out at Loki, hitting him in the side of his face, with the blunt side of his blade. Loki goes down hard and fast.

Laufeyson turns and looks at Jane again, a feral, crazed smile on his face. He raises his blade again over Loki’s slumped body.

“Time to say goodbye.”

Jane doesn’t hesitate. Charging across the short space between them and throwing her body at Loki’s prone form. She curls herself over him, her knees either side of his hips, and her arms around his neck, protecting as much of him as she can.

“Get up _you absurd mortal_ , or I will kill you both,” Laufeyson growls, from above her.

Jane lifts her head, and turns and looks at Laufeyson. She tries to see it; to see some humanity in the dark, red eyes glaring down at her, but there’s just an empty, hollow hatred.

“You don’t have to do this,” Jane says. “It’s not too late.”

Laufeyson’s expression seems to falter slightly, briefly, and then shift into a grotesque rage.

“Jane?” Loki says groggily, his body shifting slightly under hers. Jane turns back to face him. There’s blood oozing from the wound on his head. She shifts her hands from his neck to the sides of his face, and her lips curl into a small, lopsided smile.

“It’s okay, I’ve got you.”

Loki’s gaze flicks away from her, to something behind her, and his eyes get wide.

“No--” He starts, but it’s already too late. There’s a loud crack, and excruciating, shattering, white-hot agony as the blade pierces her back. Loki’s face is spattered with blood that she knows isn’t from him. Jane cries out in pain, and an explosion of red light from within her breaks through the hall; the force of it shaking the ground underneath them.

Then the light fades from her eyes and she slumps forward, into darkness.

When she opens her eyes again, she’s flying, moving through the air, effortlessly.

No, Jane realises, as her surroundings begin to come back into a blurry focus, she’s not flying, she’s being carried. Someone is carrying her, and they’re running. They’re running fast, the air rushing over her skin in waves. She hears a voice shout something, loud and frantic, and then she stops. Everything stills and she’s lowered slowly, gently back onto the ground.

Someone leans over her and whispers against her ear. She knows his voice.

 _Hold on_ , Thor tells her. _Eir is coming_.

He’s alive. Thor’s alive.

_How?_

“Thor, you’re— you’re not dead.”

Thor nods, and looks vaguely ashamed somehow, and Jane can’t work out why.

“My death was merely an illusion your friend conjured to try and catch Laufeyson unawares. Please Jane, stay still, you are not well.”

“I’m okay,” Jane grits out. The aether is healing her more quickly now. She can feel the wound in her back closing together, her heartbeat starting to steady, the pain starting to ease. Another feeling, a quiet dread, breaks through her pain and confusion.

Jane sits up slowly, her head throbbing, and reaches out, grabbing Thor’s forearm.

“Where’s Laufeyson?”

“He’s gone,” Thor says. “He’s dead, Jane. You do not need to fear him anymore.”

Jane lets go of Thor and looks up. The Jotuns are gone. They fled, presumably, once they realised their King had been killed. The room is scattered with injured and dead Aesir, but there’s someone she can’t see anywhere. Someone who should be here, with her. Something worse than fear catches her breath in her throat.

“Thor, what about my friend? Where’s Loki?”

Thor takes Jane’s hand. His finger close around hers. When he looks at her, his eyes are desperately sad, and she knows what he’s going to say before the words even leave his mouth.

“No,” Jane whispers.

“I’m sorry Jane, they felled each other. Your Loki is dead.”

“No,” Jane says again, louder this time. “Where is he?”

“You must rest, you are not well,” Thor insists, but Jane is already scrambling unsteadily to her feet. She scans the bodies strewn across the broken hall floor. Her gaze finds Laufeyson, and then Loki next to him, his body slumped where he had fallen. A jolt of despair shocks through her. She won’t lose him. Not here. Not again.

Thor says something else, but Jane doesn’t hear it, stumbling blindly across the room toward him. 

She reaches Loki’s side. His eyes are closed, blood pooled darkly underneath him, and still draining from his lips. Jane leans down and holds onto him, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck, willing the aether to work for them both.

 _Come back,_ Jane thinks, desperately. She doesn’t even realise she’s crying until the tears start running over her lips and she can taste them. 

 _Please, come back_.

There’s movement beside her, and Jane lets go of Loki. Sif kneels down and presses something, bright and glinting, into her hand. It’s the yellow stone Laufeyson had been wearing. Jane grasps Sif’s hand tightly for a moment, an uncertain hope lighting up within her.

Jane places both her palms on Loki’s chest, the yellow stone tucked under one of them. She focuses as hard as she can on the power in the stone, and simultaneously reaches inside herself to summon every ounce of power she has. The combined feeling of them, reality and mind, is immense and fills up her veins with heat and light. She can feel every part of every universe, endless and eternal, and her, right in the middle of it. Light clouds her eyes and red mist swirls around them, whipping her hair into her face.  
  
Loki’s heartbeat first, and then his breathing pick up slowly under her fingertips. When Jane comes back to herself, he is looking up at her, the colour in his face again. There’s blood in his eyelashes, and his eyes are wide.

“I saw it,” Loki gasps. “I remember how I survived Thanos.”

Jane can’t speak. A quiet, choked sound escapes her lips and she just reaches out to him. Loki’s eyes soften suddenly, and he doesn’t hesitate, sitting up and pulling her into him. His arms wrapping around her and clutching her so tightly it almost stops her breath. Jane clings back, holding onto him amidst the sea of bodies, like he’s the last thing keeping her afloat.

“Loki, I--” 

“It’s alright,” His voice is soft. “I’ve got you.”

Jane glances at Laufeyson’s dead body; his eyes staring blankly, devoid of light, and still _so_ familiar.

She reaches out and presses the yellow stone back into Sif’s hand. Then she grabs onto Loki again. Jane focuses on home until her eyes begin to flood with red light and the air around them blinks, stutters, and then slips out from underneath her.

//

They land in her kitchen, hard. Jane comes in so fast she slides across the floor and thumps into the wall with a small yelp.

Loki sits up and rubs the back of his head.

“Your landings need some work.”

Jane rights herself and pulls her cell phone out of her pocket. Amazingly, it’s charged, and even more surprising than that:

“It’s the same day. The day we were on Bleecker Street.” Jane pauses. “That’s weird, right?”

“Not overly so,” Loki responds. “It follows that you would transport yourself to a day that you remembered, rather than some unknowable future date based on the time we spent in that last universe.”

“But we are home, right? We’re in the right universe. This is my life, isn’t it?”

“It certainly seems to be.”

An uneasy quiet settles between them. Jane looks at her clothes, still covered in her blood; the dark stains are starting to dry and harden the fabric.

She gets to her feet.

“I’m going to go clean up,”

Jane closes the bathroom door behind her. She peels off her clothes and looks at her reflection in the mirror. There’s blood and dirt on her face, but on her shoulder where a Frost Giant had dug an axe into her skin, there’s already barely a scar left.

If only the aether would take care of the ache in her chest as neatly.

There’s a place in her hallway where the wood has swelled. She’d drunk too much wine the night Thor and her and broken up, and she’d left the bath running too long. It had overflowed, and the water had seeped right into the wood.  
  
The bathroom had been cleaned up since, and the floorboards had dried out, but not before they’d risen up, just slightly. Just enough that, after showering and getting into some clean clothes, Jane can feel the swollen wood shift under her feet as she walks down the hallway and out the front door.

Grey clouds hide the sun, but when Jane sits on her front steps, the cement is dry, if not warm. It wouldn’t matter to her if it were raining, it’s so comforting to see the sky again; reaching into her and warming her inside.

After a few minutes, the door opens again, and Loki sits down on the steps next to her, clean and back in his black suit. His gaze follows hers upward.

“How long do you think were we there, in the end?” Jane asks.

“I lost track after seven months.”

“It felt like forever.” Jane glances at him. “But I guess a few months, a year or two. It doesn’t mean all that much to a god that lives for thousands, right?”

“It’s nothing,” Loki agrees, looking back at her. “A heartbeat.”

Two kids on bicycles race down the footpath in front of them and across the road, their raincoats flying out behind them like capes. Jane watches them until she can't, until they disappear into a side street.

“Humans must seem so small to you,” she says.

“You seem small,” Loki replies. “Everyone else appears to be the correct approximate size for their species and age range.”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

“I know what you meant,” Loki ducks his head slightly, his hair falling in front of his face. “You’ll be relieved to know I have no current plans to destroy Earth.”

Jane shakes her head, awkwardly. It had come out all wrong.

“No, I wasn’t—I know you’re not _him_.”

“That’s just it, Foster. We’re the same person. I’m as much him as _any of them_.”

“You can’t be,” Jane says, her throat tight. “Because if you’re him then I’m her and—I would never—”

“Never what?” Loki sighs. “You _don’t_ _know_ what you might have become if that aether had remained inside you, or if you’d survived it.” He glances at her again. “I understand it is easier to cling to the idea everyone is good or evil, Foster; that there is only light or the absence of it, but I think you know that things are rarely that simple, even when you pretend not to; even when it terrifies you.”

Jane looks down at her hands. There’s still dirt and blood under her fingernails.

“So, you’re a Goethe fan, huh?”

“A what?”

“Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,” Jane elaborates, quietly. “He rejected Newton's position that darkness was just the absence of light; that it was passive. He theorised that colours, the way we see them, are made up of both light and darkness.” She pauses, rolling out the stiffness in her shoulders. “He said, _'Yellow is a light which has been dampened by darkness; Blue is darkness weakened by light.'_ So, the sky is blue because of the sun’s light. The sun is yellow because of the sky’s darkness. One doesn’t exist without the other.”

Loki tilts his head slightly.

“I’m not certain that holds up under any kind of scrutiny.”

“Yeah, well, he was a poet, not a scientist.”

Loki lips twitch slightly.

“Ah, of course.”

Jane laughs a little. “Said with such _scorn_.”

Loki’s smirk widens, and Jane is surprised by how genuinely relaxed he looks all of a sudden. It’s a charming, rare look on him, and she doesn’t want to take that away, but she knows she needs to ask something she’s been wondering since they got back.

“You said before, that you remembered how you survived Thanos.”

His smile falters.

“I thought I did, for a moment. But in retrospect, I think it may have been little more than an apparition.”

Jane nudges his shoulder with her own.

“Can you tell me anyway?”

“If you wish,” he turns his head and looks at her, furrowing his brow slightly. “It was you.”

Jane stills, stunned into silence. Of all the answers she had expected, that was not even remotely close to any of them.

“ _What_?” she says, finally. “Like …another version of me? From your universe?”

“I suppose.”

“You don’t know?”

Loki pauses, face creased with thought. “I thought it was you.”

Jane shakes her head at him, her thoughts muddled.

“It can’t have been me. I wasn’t there, you’re talking about a—”

“Paradox. I know.” Loki shrugs, half-heartedly. “I wouldn’t put any stock in it. As I said, it was likely some confused thought that my mind fired off randomly in the midst of my reanimation, due to the immense combined power of Laufeyson’s stone and your abilities. I doubt any of it was real.”

Jane nods. That seems like the most reasonable explanation; that while she’d been saving him on Asgard, as he’d come back, and his mind had reawakened, it had tricked him into thinking she’d saved him before too. She feels vaguely disappointed, realising the real answer might be lost to them; that they’d never know what saved him. In the end, it doesn’t make any difference anymore.

_Does it?_

Loki gets to his feet and heads back inside. Jane stays out on the steps for a while longer, until the rain starts to drop on her bare feet, and turn her skin cold and red. When she heads back inside. Loki’s on her sofa, one of her books in open his lap, just like that first day when she’d found him in her kitchen. It feels like a million lifetimes ago now.

In linear terms, it was only yesterday. If she could go back months in time between universes, could she go back a few days in the same one?

“Loki?” Jane asks, towelling her hair dry. “What if it was me?”

Loki looks up.

“I’m sorry?”

“What if I could go back and help him?”

“And do what, exactly?” Loki sighs, looking suddenly, inexplicably irritable. “Attack Thanos? Do you remember what he did to the Hulk? He’d kill you in an instant.”

“I could bring Loki back here, maybe?" Jane knows she's reaching, but she doesn't want to give up. "Just him.”

Loki shakes his head, visibly annoyed.

“Remove him from the situation, and leave Thor behind? Put an entire timeline at risk on a whim, on the visions of a dead man?”

“I don’t know!” Jane says, exasperated. “You tell me! You’re the one that _saw me there_!”

“I saw a glimpse of you in the darkness!” Loki snaps, losing his composure slightly. “It was nothing, it _meant nothing_! I’m sorry I told you!”

Jane strangles the towel between her hands.

“Why are you getting so mad at me for trying to help?”

“Why are you so determined to put your life at risk over the _flimsiest_ \--?”

Loki is interrupted by Jane’s cell buzzing. He lets out a small, frustrated noise and turns his attention back to his book, and Jane heads to the kitchen, plucking her phone from the bench.

“Darcy, this isn’t a great time. I’m having an argument with my imaginary fr--"

Jane stops suddenly. The noise from her cell turns her blood cold. Darcy is sobbing at her, so loudly that she can’t understand anything she’s saying, only catching two words. _Erik_ and _Ash_.

A faint memory of a distant Asgardian universe stirs in the back of her mind.

Please, Jane thinks, _not_ _that_.  
  
“Darcy.” Jane’s voice is stretched, thin. “Darcy, please calm down. I can’t hear what you’re saying. What’s happened to Erik?”  
  
“They--they’re all turning to ash,” Darcy says, between sobs. “Erik-- he-- he just disappeared-- into nothing -And then I ran outside and--”

Darcy starts weeping again, unable to speak.  
  
“What do you mean, ash?” Jane says, heart thudding in her chest. “I don’t understand.”

_Please._

_Not here. Not at home._  
  
“There’s-- Something awful is happening, Jay. I’ve got to get home to my parents I can’t reach them on the phone.”  
  
“Wait, Darcy--”  
  
“I love you, I’ll call you later okay?”  
  
“Love you too,” Jane says to a dial tone. She puts her phone down and walks back into the living room. Loki is already standing, watching her carefully.

“What’s happened?”

“Turn on the TV,” Jane says.  
  
Loki hesitates. Jane grabs the remote herself and switches on the television.  
  
_“...reports of hundreds and thousands of people, perhaps even millions worldwide disintegrating in what appears to be some sort of chemical attack. No word yet from the White House…”  
_  
Blurry cellphone footage appears on the screen of people running in the street. The phone focuses on a man in a suit, who seems, initially to trip, but then Jane realises, he’s crumbling, dissolving into _ash_ \- just like Darcy had said. The phone pans around, and there are dozens of them, disappearing one after the other. It’s just like her vision of Asgard. But it’s happening here. It’s happening to them. Jane reaches out for something to hold onto, grabbing the back of the sofa.  
  
“Thanos.”

 Loki’s voice is flat; resigned. “He’s won. It’s over.”  
  
“ _No_.” Jane shakes her head. “It can’t be over. What about the Avengers? What about Thor?”  
  
“Foster.”  
  
“I have to call home,” Jane says, panicked, grabbing her phone again. Her face is hot, and tears are prickling the backs of her eyes. She tries the first number in her contacts list but gets a busy signal.  
  
When she turns back to speak to Loki, he’s standing just a few feet behind her, his face paler than she’s ever seen it.  
  
“Foster, your arm.”  
  
That’s all he says, but somehow Jane knows what she’s going to see. Perhaps she’d felt it all along, and her mind just hadn’t allowed her to acknowledge it. She looks down. In her right upper arm is a gaping hole. Flakes of ash are peeling off at the edge and floating slowly down to the floor.  
  
“Oh,” Jane says softly.

Loki looks at her helplessly.

“Why is it so slow?” Jane asks, stunned. “Why aren’t I disintegrating like everyone else?”  
  
“I think your power is trying to heal you.”  
  
“But it can’t stop it.”  
  
Loki shakes his head.

“There’s nothing in the universe that can match the combined power of the infinity stones. It’s just a matter of time.”  
  
Jane realises her whole body is trembling. Another swathe of ash breaks off her body and flutters to the floor.  
  
“How long?”  
  
“I couldn’t tell you. Hours? A day, perhaps?”

“Can’t I just, go to a different universe or--” Jane’s thoughts are scattered. “Take us to another day or something?”

“Foster, all your power is currently, frantically trying to keep you alive.” Loki’s voice is soft. “You couldn’t use it to lift a vase in this state.”

Jane presses her hand against the middle of her chest, over her heart.  
  
“I’m dying.”  
  
Loki nods. “I’m sorry,”

“Well,” Jane says, after a moment. “I guess I can let go of my guilt about forgetting to return my library books this—" she glances down at the hole in her arm, spreading slowly outward, tears starting to run warm lines down her cheeks “This-- this --”  
  
“Shh,” Loki says, stepping closer to her, and holding up his hands. “It’s alright.”

Jane shakes her head, suddenly frustrated.  
  
“It’s alright _for you_. You’re fine! When this is all over you’ll go back to a whole different universe.” Jane’s voice is broken up by sobs. “You won’t even have to remember this.”

Loki takes another step forward, and hesitates, like he wants to comfort her, but is worried about breaking her into millions of pieces of ash.  
  
“You’re right. It’s not alright. It’s unthinkable, and you deserved better. You deserved a long and--.”

“Stop,” Jane sobs. “You’re not helping.”

Loki turns away from her for a moment, visibly concentrating, and then doubles back.

“Okay, listen, you’ve got time Foster. Is there anything you want to do? Loot? Pillage? Hire the services of a courtesan? Go into space? It’s the end of the world, anything goes.”  
  
Jane wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, trying to breathe. “The courtesan thing isn’t a bad idea.”  
  
Loki blinks. “Oh. Really?”

She narrows her eyes at him.  
  
“No, not really, you idiot. What century do you think this is?”

Jane sits down on the couch, the panic, the despair, starting to ease up a little.

“I think I just want to stay here,” she says, finally.

Loki sits down next to her. “Are you sure? Because I could take you somewhere. Anywhere in this universe, if you want it.”

Jane looks at him.

“I’ve seen enough for today.”

Loki nods, once, twice, and then gets up and walks out the front door. It closes behind him with a snap. Jane stares at the door for a few minutes, before she decides it isn’t a joke.

Jane opens all the windows in her house. She pulls her notebook out the pocket of her hoodie and writes down the rest of it, the very last of her life, scribbled messily onto a page. She’s not sure who she’s writing it for anymore, she just wants there to be something left.

_I was here._

The light is fading when she goes out after him.

Jane steps out into the rain, pulling a rain jacket over her head. It doesn’t do much, the rain is heavy and seeps in at her wrists and neck, and through her sneakers. She’s three blocks down the road before she spots Loki, drenched from head to toe, hair flat against his head, dripping; walking toward her with his usual, impassive calm; like he doesn’t even know it’s raining.  
  
Jane punches him in the face, hard. Loki’s head snaps back.

He rubs his chin, wearily.

“You know, I truly thought we were past this.”  
  
“What is _wrong_ with you?” Jane yells. “You were going to run away? Leave me to disintegrate into nothing? On _my own_?”  
  
“No, I--,” He reaches into his pocket, “I just got you these, you seem to have eaten quite a lot of them, so I thought--”  
  
In his hand are several packets of Reese’s Pieces. Jane stares at them for a moment and then laughs. A loud, hysterical burst of laughter she can’t hold back.  
  
“Sorry, is this funny?” Loki asks, brow furrowed.  
  
“A little.” Jane takes a deep breath. “How did you even—Where did you _get those_?”

Even as she asks, she realises what the answer is. Most of the shops are probably empty now.  
  
“It doesn’t matter,” Loki says, and Jane doesn’t mind that he's being evasive this time. He shakes his head and stuffs the candy back in his pocket, quickly. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

He looks so aimless, so completely _human_ all of a sudden, it tugs strangely at her. Jane steps forward and presses her undamaged hand against the middle of his chest, over his breastbone, where she can feel the reliable, constant, reassuring thud of his heart. He’s here, for now. That’s something.

Loki peers down at her hand.

“It’s still beating, I assume?”

Jane nods. His black shirt is soaked and clings to her fingers.

“Yeah, it seems to be functional.”

“I have wondered.”

“I think we all have.”

Loki’s lips tilt downward slightly.

“If you’re going to be impolite, I will eat that chocolate in front of you.”

Jane grins, and her hand drops away from his chest. Water is trickling down the neck of her jacket, and she can feel herself beginning to shiver.  
  
“I thought you’d left,” Jane says, after a beat. “I thought I was going to be alone at the end.”

Loki bows his head slightly.

“Jane--”

“Erik’s gone, and Darcy is miles away, but--” It doesn’t matter anymore, Jane realises. She doesn’t have to pretend she’s not vulnerable, that it doesn’t frighten her. It doesn’t matter what anyone sees or doesn’t see. She’s slipping from this life, every minute, and so is he. “But I’m not alone,” Jane looks up at him. “I have _you_ , don’t I?”  
  
Loki’s eyes are full of a sudden, quiet intensity. He reaches out and gently pushes a few strands of wet hair back from her face.  
  
For a moment it feels like it’s not raining at all.

“Jane, you have me,” he says finally, his voice barely audible above the pouring rain. “Unequivocally.”

Jane steps into him and gently tugs the front of Loki’s drenched shirt, urging him down to her, until his lips are on hers. His skin is wet and cold from the rain, but his mouth is warm, and she kisses him hard, urgently; like he’s her way out of here. Loki makes a soft noise against her mouth, his hands coming up to clutch the sides of her face, making her chest thrum with an ache she’d almost forgotten. Jane leans into him and digs her fingers into his soaked hair, the rise and fall of her chest matching his.  
  
Loki breaks the kiss suddenly, his cheeks flushed.  
  
“If this is a clever ruse to get at the candy in my pockets, I must tell you, it’s excessive.”  
  
She wipes some of the rain from his cheek, and Loki absently leans into her touch, his gaze never leaving her face. Jane hadn’t wished for more time before, but now she does. She wants so much more time than they have left.  
  
“You got me, that was the plan.” Jane smiles. “Can you kiss me again, I wasn’t able to get them the first time and I’m hungry.”  
  
Loki smiles back at her. It’s real, and as bright as the sun.  
  
“If I must,” he sighs, and then kisses her again, and again, and again.  
  
Jane doesn’t know how they get home; she barely remembers how they end up in her bed. All she knows or cares about is the feel of him, the warmth of Loki’s skin on hers, his touch like pinpoints of white, hot light suffusing her body, enveloping her, making her feel whole again.

//  
  
Jane wakes a little while later, her body curled up against the curve of him; his arm resting lightly around her waist. She watches Loki for a little while in the half-light, taken by how much younger he looks when he’s like this; the creases of his permanent frown smoothed away. She traces her fingers lightly over his bare, pale skin; trying to hold some of that peace inside her for as long as she can.

Loki eyes crack open a little, and he leans forward and presses a soft kiss to the furrow in her brow.

“Let me take you somewhere,” he says, his voice thick with sleep.

“Okay then,” Jane nods, shuffling closer to him. “Where are we going to go?”

“Home.”

Loki wraps an arm around her and Jane sees green light; feels a shiver of something powerful and electric, and then darkness.

She’s clothed again when she opens her eyes, bundled up in a huge woollen jacket and beanie, but the cold is still shocking, and icy on her breath. She’s in the middle of a small, snow-covered courtyard, in the dark, and she shivers a little.

Loki appears again, seemingly from nowhere, at her side, and grasps her intact arm.

“This way,” he says breathlessly, and pulls her, hurriedly, down a long, snow covered street, down toward a bay.

When they reach the end of the street and the houses are behind them, the sky unfolds and opens up across the water. Jane looks up and gasps. It’s an aurora, but not like the type she’s seen before, or even in pictures. The thick ribbon of green light quivering through the sky is haloed by purple swathes of light and the faintest shades of pink.

It’s breathtaking shades of perfect light, moving through the darkness. It is more dazzling than anything, real or imagined. Jane can’t move, can’t look away. She’s transfixed, buzzing and somehow, even with her life fading away, more alive than she’s ever felt.

“It’s something, isn’t?” Loki says, smiling at her.

Jane blinks away tears.

“It’s really beautiful.”

The world shifts and they’re back in her apartment, Loki’s body curled against hers. She brushes dark strands of his hair away from his face and kisses him. His hands cradle the sides of her face as he leans into it, so soft, so uncharacteristically gentle, that her heart threatens to break from it.  
  
It’s almost midnight when there’s a change. Jane wakes from light sleep and realises her body is beginning to lose its battle; she can feel and see herself fading away, much faster now than before. She takes a deep, shaky breath and doesn’t fight it, keeping her eyes on the street lights shining in through her bedroom window.  
  
Loki must feel something too, somehow, because when he opens his eyes suddenly, he looks at her with a resignation that unsteadies her calm. Wordlessly, he pulls her, what’s left of her, into his arms. He’s still warm, still solid, he still feels so real, and she doesn’t care if he is or he isn’t anymore.

Jane wonders, suddenly, if the reason for all of this could be that simple. That he was here so she wouldn’t be alone, and shattering, splintering into endless darkness. So, she’d have someone to say goodbye to. So that in the end, she’d have something gentle.  
  
That maybe, he would too.  
  
The thought calms her somehow, and Jane buries her head in the crook of Loki’s neck and breathes in the wholeness of him.  
  
“Hey, tell me about Folkvangr.”  
  
Loki’s breath is warm against her ear.  
  
“It is, apparently, a vast, green meadow, covered in warm, golden light, more spectacular than anything you can imagine.”  
  
Jane closes her eyes. She can feel the heavy thud of her heart beating against her chest. She wonders, vaguely, how many beats she has left.  
  
“Do you think I’ll get to see it?”  
  
“Frigga’s probably already preparing your seat in Sessrumnir,” He’s lying to her of course, but she doesn’t mind. It’s getting close. They’re running out of time.

“Keep talking,” Jane says.

Loki turns his head toward hers slightly.

“What would you have me say?”

“I don’t know,” Jane whispers. It's getting harder for her to breathe now; harder to speak. “Don’t do the whole ‘Loki of Asgard’ spiel though, I’ll be ash before you get halfway through it.”

Jane feels the huff of Loki’s laughter against her ear.

“Exasperating to a fault, as always, Foster.” He pauses. “You make it so difficult to stay fond of you.”

It’s almost over now; she can feel herself coming apart. Jane smiles against the warmth of his skin.

“But you are.”

“You know I am.” He presses a lingering kiss to the side of her head; his voice soft, close. “With all of my heart.”

She sees all of them. All the lives she never lived. All the choices she never made. Stolen memories and lost moments. The future she almost had, bright and startling and fleetingly, hers.

Jane breathes out for the last time, and she lets him go.  
  
She lets it all go.  
  
And the light is blinding.

//

 _Hello, sweetheart_.

A voice speaks to her in the darkness. A woman’s voice she knows but can’t place.

_Time to wake up._

_//_

Jane’s eyes open, and she gasps for air.

Another voice, different to the one before, is saying her name.  
  
Darcy’s face comes into focus, hovering above hers.  
  
“You’re awake,” Darcy cries, throwing her arms around her. “Oh, thank god, I thought you were dead. When I came in there was this weird red light, and I thought-- it doesn’t matter what I thought, you’re okay! You are okay, right?”  
  
“Yeah, I’m okay.” Jane sits up. Her head is throbbing. “Where is he?”  
  
“Where is who?”  
  
“Loki.”  
  
Darcy gives her a strange look. “Thor’s brother? Should he... be here?”  
  
Jane hesitates. “I don’t know.”

“Jay? Are you really okay?”

“How did I get back here?” Jane asks, scanning the room. Her thoughts are hazy and muddled. _Where is he?_ “Was it the Avengers? What happened?”

Darcy is watching her carefully, concern creasing her face.  
  
“Nothing happened, I just had the day off and wanted to see you.”

Jane stares at her, a hollow feeling starting to worm its way into her chest.

“But I-- I _disintegrated_ , and Erik too. People were turning to ash. Don’t you remember?”

Darcy shakes her head, confused.

“I don’t-- I don’t know what you’re talking about? Everything is fine. Erik’s just the same as always. I saw him this morning before I left.”

“You--”

“What’s wrong? What happened to you?”

“I-- It’s nothing,” Jane lies, looking down at her hands. Her fingernails are clean. “I think-- I think I just had a bad dream and uh, got confused. I haven’t been sleeping much lately, and I guess I’m kind of out of sorts.”

Darcy doesn’t look convinced.

“I’m okay, honestly,” Jane tells Darcy. “I’m fine. I think I just need to wake up a little.”  
  
Darcy nods for a little too long, and then gets to her feet. “I’ll cook you something. You should eat.”

She heads toward the kitchen.

“Darcy?”

“Yeah?”

Jane smiles, blinking back tears.

“It’s so good to see you.”

Darcy grins. “Love you too, you weirdo.”

Darcy disappears into the kitchen, and Jane switches on the TV. She flicks through every channel. There’s nothing about what happened. Nothing about people turning to ash. Nothing about the Avengers. It’s like it never happened.

Jane _knows_ it was real. She can still feel it. Darcy’s panicked voice over the phone. The footage of people crumbling into ash. Loki’s holding her as she faded away into nothing.

Everything has been restored to the way it was. They won, somehow. They beat Thanos.

Jane should be happy. She _is_.

Except there is something, she knows they didn’t undo. That happened before everything else. Jane sits down in the corner of her sofa. He was an echo of another life, she reminds herself. Another future. Something quiet and gentle and unexpected. Something that wasn’t yours.

 _There are thousands of millions of universes out there, Jane, some beyond repair_ , he had said to her once. _You can’t save everyone._

Another voice, whispers at the back of her mind.

_Then what was the point of it?_

Darcy pokes her head out of the kitchen door.

“We’re going to have to order in. No judgement, but all you’ve got in your fridge is cheese strings and a roll of cookie dough.”  
  
There’s a place in the hallway on the way to the bathroom where the wood has swelled, where bath water seeped in. Jane can see where the floorboards have risen up when the low light shines in through her windows that afternoon, an orange welt across the smooth surface. Jane drags the fern out of her room and sits it right on top of it.  
  
“Great idea,” Darcy tells her through a mouthful of pizza. “You can barely see the damage now.”  
  
Someday, Jane thinks, she really might not.

//

Jane wakes in the early hours of the morning. It’s still dark, but there’s light creeping under her bedroom door from the living room. Darcy is sitting on her couch, Jane’s notebook open on her lap. When she notices Jane is there she looks up, her eyes wide with confusion.

Jane can feel heat flushing her skin.

“You read all of it?”

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t sleep, and it was sitting right there on your bookcase and I--” Darcy closes the notebook. “Jay, what is this?”

Jane leans over the sofa and takes the notebook from Darcy’s hands. “It’s nothing, just a weird dream I had.”

Darcy shakes her head.

“Why are you lying to me? Are you trying to... protect me or something?”

Jane hesitates, her head still foggy with sleep, but a quiet sadness starting to push through at the edges.

“If-- If I told you everything you read was true, would you even believe me?”

“You know I would.” Darcy’s eyes shine with unshed tears. “Is it true?”

Jane nods, gripping the notebook tightly in her hands like it's the only thing she has; the only thing that's left of him.

Darcy takes a deep breath.

“Then, I guess, you better take a look at your last entry.”

Jane sits down next to Darcy on the sofa and opens the notebook. She flicks through her rushed scribblings, to the last page. There, under her last entry, in jagged, unfamiliar handwriting, are just three lines of text. Jane knows who wrote them.

 _The branch on the tree.  
_ _It was real.  
_ _It was you_ _._

She stares at the words and something small and quiet clicks into place.

Jane knows better than most that everything has a time limit. Even millions and millions of miles away, stars burn out.

An impossible thought starts to take shape anyway.  
  
_The aether possesses the power to bend the very fabric of reality. Do you not understand what you’re capable of? Or do you know, and you’re too scared to think about what it means?  
_  
The other universes are closed to her now. Jane has only this one timeline, and only one choice to make.

On her sofa at 3am, she makes it.

“What does it mean?” Darcy asks. “The branch on the tree?”

Jane pulls Darcy into a hug, holding her so tightly, like it might be her last chance.

“It means I’m running late.”

//

Darcy goes home after a couple of days

But it’s another five before Jane’s ready to go.

She’s never really been all that invested in chaos theory in the past, but she knows enough about it to know what she’s risking. Her life. Thor’s life. The _entire universe_ if she does it wrong, if the change is too big, if her impact is too much; if her wings flap too hard. And if she goes back, she erases everything that happened between her and the Loki that landed in kitchen. If everything goes the right way, she may not even be able to hold onto the memories of him.

Jane stares at the writing in her notebook.

_It was real._

It could be that simple. It could have just been another Jane who saved another Loki in another universe. But Jane has started to wonder the last few days if they’d got that part wrong from the beginning. That maybe, this universe’s Loki hadn’t been gone after all. That he’d been here with her all along. A ghost echoing into the future; calling her back to a moment in the past he couldn’t remember, because she wasn’t there yet.

_It was you._

Jane writes the last entry in her notebook, before she tucks it in between a couple of books in her bookcase.

She lies down on the floor and focuses on where she wants to be and lets the aether take over. Her eyes go dark, suffused with red light, and the world shifts.

//

 _This_ _is the Asgardian Refugee Vessel Statesman. We are under assault; I repeat we are under assault.  
  
The engines are dead, life support failing. Requesting aid from any vessel in range.  
  
We are twenty-two jump points out of Asgard. Our crew is made up of Asgardian families; we have very few soldiers here.  
  
This is not a warcraft._

_I repeat this is not a warcraft._

//

Jane’s lying in wreckage, her skin covered in dirt and ash. It’s dark, but she can see the flickering of orange light, and make out the shapes of broken steel. She can hear the low sound of voices, only some of the words, barely audible, make it to her ears.

_I know what it’s like to lose. To feel so desperately that you’re right, but to fail nonetheless._

Jane turns onto her side and lifts her head. She can’t see them, but she knows they’re there.

_Dread it, run from it. Destiny arrives all the same._

Shifting onto her hands and knees, Jane begins picking her way through the rubble. Moving as quietly as she can towards the voices. There’s a sudden, piercing, grinding sound, and then she hears someone start to scream.

Thor.

_Alright, stop!_

Jane’s hand reaches out and touches something cold and wet. She looks down and sees the body of an Asgardian woman, unmoving, eyes staring blankly at her. Jane breathes in sharply, and recoils, scrambling backward into a small, dark space. Into the shell of what looks like part of a ship.  
  
_Your optimism is misplaced, Asgardian.  
  
Well, for one thing, I’m not Asgardian. And for another_

A roar and a sudden, loud crash shake the ground and send debris falling from the shattered metal above her. Movement catches her eye, and Jane lifts her head just in time to see Loki bolt into the small, hidden space with her. Loki stumbles forward, breathing heavily, not having noticed her, looking back at where the barrage of noise is coming from.  
  
Now or never, Jane realises.  
  
“Hey,” she says, getting to her feet.  
  
Loki spins around, conjuring a knife. When he spots her his eyes narrow with confusion. “What are _you_ doing here? How on--”

“Shh,” Jane interrupts. “There’s no time. I need you to trust me.”  
  
“I barely _know_ you.”

Another loud thud and crash startle her. They both look up.

“Good point.” Jane takes a few steps toward him. “Can you give me your hand for a just a minute?”

Loki blinks at her. “What?”

“I need to show you something.” She reaches out to him. Loki hesitates, but he must see something desperate in her face, because he steps forward and places his hand in hers. Jane presses his palm against the side of her head.

“I’m sorry, this is going to be a little awkward.”

“What?” Loki says again.

A series of loud thumps and bangs shake the ship so violently it almost topples them both. Jane plants her feet, and grips his hand harder, trying to block it out.

There’s not enough time to show him everything, so she focuses on the important memories, and lets him have them.

_Loki on the floor of her kitchen/ In her living room/ Seeing her memories/ In her car/ Revealing her power/ Unseen by Darcy and Erik/ With her in a different universe/ Every universe/ In the cell, eyes black/ Laufeyson/ The flash of a blade / Sitting on her steps/ The ash that had floated from her body/ The realisation/ Both of them in the rain/ Pulling her into his arms and kissing her lips/ Her face/ Her neck/ Kissing her as he followed her to bed/ Holding her until he couldn’t/_

When Jane comes back to herself, an eerie quiet has settled over the ship.

Loki’s staring at her. His eyes wide, bewildered; his cheeks flushed. He opens his mouth as if to speak, but no words form on his lips. Jane concentrates, dropping his hand and pressing hers against the middle of his chest, over his breastbone.

 _Allfathers_ _, let the dark magic flow through me one last time._

A sudden howl. Loki looks up.

“Heimdall--,” He breathes. “Foster--”

“Trust me,” she says, again.

He just nods, helplessly.  
  
Jane closes her eyes, and she focuses on every ounce of power she has. The air fills with light, the universe is alive and breathing, and for a moment she can feel every colour of it.

The earth shifts underneath her and then spins.

_You’re going to die, for that._

Jane opens her eyes. Loki stumbles backward; his eyes cloud with a familiar, radiant red light.

It _worked_ , Jane realises, before her legs give out under her, and she slumps to the ground. Her head smacks into something blunt and metallic with a painful thud, and she yelps and curls onto her side.

Loki crouches down beside her and tries to help her sit up, but her body is too strained from the transfer, and her limbs are weak, floppy; they won’t support her.

“You foolish woman,” Loki hisses. “What have you done?”

“Go,” Jane says breathlessly.

“For mercy’s sake--”

“Loki, go.”

He ignores her, trying again to pull her to her feet. “You can’t stay here, you need to leave. Get _up_.”

A low, reverberating whine peels out through the darkness, and then an explosive shudder that lights up everything around them.

Jane grabs his arm. Loki stills, and turns to look at her. There’s a wild look in his eyes.

“Go help Thor,” she says firmly. “I’ll be fine. Please.”

The mention of Thor seems to refocus him. Loki glances up, towards the echo of Thanos’ roar, and then back at her. It’s not a choice. Jane knows he’ll go back for his brother; he’d decided that long before she found him.

_There are two more stones on earth._

“I won’t be able to come back,” Loki says. “So, if you can, find somewhere safe and hide there. Do you understand?”

“You’re going to come back.” Jane gives him a tired grin. She reaches out and taps his chest lightly. “You have me.”

_Find them my children and bring them to me on Titan._

Loki looks at her in a way she can’t quite read, even now. He grasps her hand for a fleeting moment.

Then just as quickly, he’s gone.

But only from her sight. Jane can still feel the edges of him, unfocused and far away, the power she gave to him made sure of that. The invisible strings of aether keep them tied together, and she can sense him, through the dark. The tension first, then the fear, and then just the pain. All of it muted, unreachable, distorted like he’s lost underwater and sinking fast.  
  
_You will never be a god._  
  
Jane feels it coming. As his breathing slows, and his thoughts dwindle, a red light flickers to life. Her fingers close around his and don’t let go.

All the timelines, and all their choices, leading to this.

 _No resurrections_ _this time._  
  
Jane smiles. Sharp, like the edge of a knife.

The universe is fading around her piece by piece. Jane lies in the wreckage until the muffled noises stop, until the world begins to shake and explode in flashes of bright purple light; until she burns and crumbles into ash, and there is nothing but the memories and lost moments of all their lives scattered amongst the stars, finding their way to each other.

_Hello, sweetheart._

A voice speaks in the darkness. A voice she knows.

Hers.

_Time to wake up._

_//_

Jane’s eyes open, and she gasps for air.

She rolls onto her side, getting onto her hands and knees. Dirt rolls off her clothes and leaves dark smudges on the rug.

A sudden, loud bang makes her jump, and Jane instinctively crouches down, bracing herself. But the air stills around her, and there’s nothing but the sound of her own soft breathing.

A red mark on her window pulls Jane to her feet. When she goes out to her garden, a bird is lying underneath her window sill. It’s still breathing, but one of its wings flaps ineffectually. Jane picks it up, cupping it in her hands, red light swirling through her fingers. Eventually, the bird shudders in her palm and flies away.

Jane closes the door behind her and walks into her kitchen. It’s neat and tidy and intact. Not a broken glass or stray piece of cutlery lying around anywhere. She stills and focuses. Searching for anything, for any sense of him. But she only feels the faint thud of her heart, and nothing else.

On the television, there are reports of a fire, and an old woman turning one hundred and twelve, and a commercial for milk. Her journal is blank, and clean, tucked in her bookcase between two textbooks. Jane picks up her cell from the cushion on her sofa, and it’s silent and cold; the battery long dead.

At the Wal-Mart, the other shoppers are quiet and calm. Jane walks around the department store until the bright light makes her dizzy with it. Everything is as it was, and how it should be.

Jane’s shoulder aches with a long healed wound; a knowing cold inching out from it and spreading through every vessel and bone in her body. She went back, but it didn’t matter.

_Dread it. Run from it. Destiny arrives all the same._

She walks home in the rain; the stars are hidden from view by the clouds.

_How did you survive it? How did you survive it and he didn’t?_

There’s no answer.

His universe has gathered toward its rightful ending, and so has hers.

//

Jane is woken in the early morning by the sound of someone knocking on her door.  
  
She grabs her robe and stumbles, sluggishly, out of bed. The sunlight is so low and bright when she throws open the door, it stuns her eyes, and it takes her a moment to focus on who is there. As she does, takes a step back, astonished.

“Tony Stark?”

He flashes her a quick smile. All teeth.

“The one and only. And you’re Dr Jane Foster, right? Friend of Thor? Nice PJ’s by the way.”

Jane flushes and pulls her robe around herself awkwardly.

“I just woke-- It doesn’t matter. What are you doing here?”

“Right, of course,” Tony nods. He’s shorter than she envisioned, Jane thinks idly. “About that. Back at the super-secret compound I can’t officially talk to you about, we’ve got some tech that monitors earth for signs of otherworldly activity. After what happened in 2012, we had to get proactive. You understand me?”

Jane rubs her eyes.

“Sure, but why are you here exactly?”

“Well, the thing is,” Tony lowers his voice slightly, “for the last few days, your apartment and the areas surrounding it has been off the charts with unknown, and frankly _terrifying_ levels of mystical activity. Isn’t that weird?”

Jane clears her throat. Her face suddenly feels hot.

“Oh yeah, that’s… weird.”

Subtle, Jane. Really subtle. Tony eyes her curiously.

“Any idea what it’s about?”

“I can’t think of anything.” Jane shrugs, trying to feign obliviousness. “I have had the dishwasher on a couple of times this week?”

Tony gives her a long look.

“You know, I’ve read some of your work on astrophysics. Amazing stuff, really.”

 “Oh, I-- thanks.”

“You’re one smart cookie, but you’re not such a great liar.”

Jane rakes a hand through her hair and shrugs.

“Well, we can’t all be perfect Tony, or where would that leave you?”

Tony breaks into a grin.

“You know what? I like you.”

Jane gives him a tight smile.

“You’re really not going to tell me, huh?” Tony asks, after a moment.

“There’s nothing to tell.”

Tony puts his hands up in a gesture of defeat.

“Okay, well, when S.H.I.E.L.D. starts crawling all over this place just remember that I tried to help first.”

“I will.” Jane hesitates. A sudden, strange sadness settles over her. “I know.”

Tony seems to catch the odd change in her tone. The cocky, self-assured veneer drops away for a moment and something serious flickers through his expression.

“Tell me one thing, Dr Foster?”

“What’s that?”

“Are you okay?” he asks. “Do you need anything?”

Jane tries to keep her face impassive, but she can feel the corners of her mouth starting to tighten; starting to betray her.

“That’s two things.”

“Right,” Tony nods, distracted. “Okay, I should go then. It was nice to meet you, Dr Foster, finally.”

“You too, Mr Stark.”

Jane closes the door with a quiet snap.

She takes two steps into her living room and then stops. An insistent nagging nudging at the back of her mind.

Tony had seemed well-intentioned enough, but there was something that didn’t sit right with her in the way that he’d shown up, on his own like that, on her doorstep. That wasn’t S.H.I.E.L.D.’s style at all, and if what he’d said was true, they should have shown up _days ago_. There was something else, something strange that had bothered her. That wouldn’t quite leave her.

In the way he’d smiled at her. A look so familiar she’d have known it in her sleep.

You know what? _I like you._

The realisation hits her like a wave, crashing through her and making the room spin. Jane turns and throws the door open again. Tony is standing at the base of her stairs, his back to her.

Sudden irritation overwhelms her. Jane crouches down and grabs the nearest thing she can reach, some small decorative stones from the garden next to the steps, and hurls them as hard as she can at the back of Tony’s head. They mostly miss, but one grazes his ear, and another bounces off the side of his head. He looks up, startled.

“Did you just throw a rock at me?”

Jane steps out of the door frame and blinks into the sunlight.

“I’m just returning the favour, _Loki_.”

The facade of Tony Stark shimmers and fades away. Loki appears in his place, dazzling in gold and green, and very much alive. He smiles at her, and the sight of it makes her breath catch in her throat.

“It was the ‘I like you’, wasn’t it? In retrospect, that was a bit heavy-handed, even for Stark.”

Jane's heart is thudding in her chest, and she doesn’t know if it’s from joy or anger, or a weird mix of both.

“You’re such an _unbelievable asshole_.”

Loki’s smile widens. He takes a few steps up the stairs toward her.

“Now now, Foster, don’t get sentimental.”

Jane doesn’t move, watching him warily.

“So, this is real, then? You’re alive?”

He nods his head, once.

“I seem to be.”

“What about Thor?” Jane asks. “And Valkyrie, and the rest of the Asgardians?”

“All fine. They’re in Norway. Learning about Fjords and eating disturbing quantities of gelatinous fish.” He clears his throat. “Thor doesn’t know the trolls aren’t real yet, so mind you don’t say anything.”

Relief floods through Jane, for the first time in what feels like an eternity. Like she’s been trapped underwater and can finally breathe.

“Good,” Jane says. “That’s good.”

Loki sniffs.

“We’re all Midgardians now, I suppose.”

He says it with such obvious discomfort that Jane can’t help but feel a tug of something old and fond. Something she felt for someone that was almost, but not quite, him. Her hand lingers near the centre of her chest and then drops back to her side.

“Why aren’t you with them?”

“I had unfinished business to attend to,” Loki says, picking up one of the pebbles she threw at him and turning it over in his hands. “I’ll hope you’ll forgive the Stark impression, I’ve been attempting to stay under the radar. This city isn’t all that enamoured with me, as you may remember.”

Jane shoots him a sceptical look.

“You thought Tony Stark, of all people, was under the radar? Have you _met_ him?”

“I see your point,” Loki concedes. “Though, in fairness, I haven’t always used Stark’s likeness.”

Jane blinks, confused.

“Wait, hang on. How long have I been gone?”

“A few months now.”

 _Months_. Jane feels a little lightheaded, so she sits down on the step. 

“Jesus, I should have charged my phone. Darcy and Erik are going to _kill me_.” Jane looks up at Loki suddenly. “Why did—why would you keep coming back?”

Loki walks up the steps the rest of the way and sits down next to her, clasping his hands in front of him.

“I felt I had to, I suppose. To thank you, for what you did.” Loki tilts his head up and blinks into the sunlight. “Though to be honest, I was beginning to think you had died, and that you deserved it for pulling such an extraordinarily foolish stunt.”

Jane squints at him.

“Is this how you say thank you usually, or am I just getting a really nice one?”

A smile ghosts the edges of Loki’s lips, then just as quickly, it’s gone.

“Those memories you showed me. They’re your memories, not mine.”

“I know.”

A soft wistfulness stirs in her. Even if they _were_ from the same timeline all along, he’s not the Loki that found her in her kitchen that day. He’s not the same Loki she spent those months in a cell with; who saved her life over, and over again. She’s the same Jane, in most ways, but she’s not who she was at the beginning. They’re their own inimitable shades in a galaxy of swirling colour, created from the chaos that brought them here.

“I’m not him,” Loki says, as if he can read her mind. “Not as you knew him.”

“I know,” Jane says again, firmly. “I made my choice. I knew what it would mean to go back.” Jane pauses, emotion starting to tighten her throat and blur her eyes. “So did he, I think, in the end. He--”

Jane stops, trying to compose herself. Loki glances at her, and there’s something lost in the way he looks at her that makes the ache in her chest worse.

“Why did you go back?”

“Because I thought I could.” Jane quickly wipes a stray tear from her face. “Because I wanted to _._ ”

Loki wrinkles his nose.

“Those are terrible reasons. They’re not even _reasons_.”

“What difference does it make? Neither of us should be here, but we are. We got lucky.”

“It was more than that,” Loki says.

It _was_ more than that. She doesn’t understand what yet, but she feels it. 

“Maybe, but listen, I’m not asking anything from you. You don’t owe me anything. I just saw a bunch of lives and I--” Jane throws her hands up. “I wanted you to have something better in this one.”

Loki’s tone suddenly shifts into something cold.

“You wished to see me redeem myself? Throw myself at the feet of humanity and grovel for forgiveness?”

Jane exhales sharply.

“No, I _wished_ to see you have a choice.”

Loki is silent for a long moment. A truck rumbles past them and down the street.

“And if I wished for something _better_ as you put it, where do you suggest I begin?”

“I don’t know. Try staying alive, for a little while. See how that works out.”

Familiar red light flickers in Loki’s irises. Jane wonders if he’ll be able to see it in hers too. If now, connected by something powerful and ancient and lost, they’ll always recognise that light in each other. In this timeline or the next.

“It’s interesting,” Loki says. “If you spend time around beings of any variety, you inevitably notice patterns. They become easy to manipulate because their motives are predictable.” He glances at her, brow furrowing slightly. “But not you.”

“I’m a loose cannon?” Jane raises an eyebrow. “Is that what you’re trying to say?”

Loki eyes linger on her face.

“I’m saying I’ve met a lot of people, but you’re the only one that’s surprised me.”

Jane looks down at her hands. Her fingers curl and uncurl. She doesn’t know what to say to him, so she doesn’t say anything.

“What about you, then?” Loki asks, after a moment. Jane lifts her head.

“What about me?”

“All those universes you’ve seen, all those unlived lives, and now, you only have this one.” Loki hesitates. “Will it be enough?”

Jane can hear the low whine of planes flying overhead; can see one glinting its way across a ribbon of blue sky. The balmy morning air is warm and comforting on her skin. She catches Loki’s gaze and holds it, a small smile curling her lips. His eyes soften with recognition.

“The sun’s out,” Jane tells him. “It’s enough.”


End file.
